WangXian is the melody composed by Lan WangJi for Wei WuXian. It is how he recognized his soulmate after the latter’s death, even though Wei WuXian now occupies a different body. WangXian is also translated as Forgetting Envies, and is a portmanteau of their names.
But first, a little background on the connotations of the family names, all of which are common enough but will subconsciously shape how these characters are perceived in the minds of a reader who is a native speaker. If you know Chinese, you might even get the feeling that the author got pretty tongue-in-cheek about the naming of her characters.
The Jin clan is gaudy and loud about their wealth. The word Jin 金 is literally “gold”.
The Lan clan has family emblems that are cloud-themed. The word Lan 藍 is literally “blue”.
The Jiang clan has roots in a province with lots of ponds and rivers. The word Jiang 江 is literally “river” in reference to bodies of water in Southern China.
The surname Wei 魏 is familiar to history majors, as it’s one of the three nation-states in the Three Kingdoms Period. However, if you’re also a WeiLan shipper from the Guardian fandom, then you might have heard that Shen Wei’s name Wei 巍 means “Mountain god entrusts himself to Ghost”. (I might do another post on this sometime.)
In Wei Ying’s Wei 魏 there’s no mountain 山 involved; that’s the top part of the character in Shen Wei’s Wei 巍. The original meaning of the word 魏 is grand and majestic – the left half of that character means god or entrust, while the right half means ghost. Fitting surname for a grandmaster who deals with the deceased.
Now the fun part with the personal names.
Lan Zhan’s formal name Zhan 湛 means deep or clear, without impurities. It is often prefixed to the front of the word “blue” to describe the color of sunny cloudless skies, azure.
(As an aside, his elder brother Lan XiChen’s formal name is Huan 渙, and means an expansive spreading of water with connotations of dispersion. Both Zhan and Huan have the water word root on the left half of the character.)
Wei Ying’s formal name Ying 嬰 literally means babe. In ancient times it used to also refer to necklaces, but that didn’t stop people from naming their sons thus. Historically there are at least a handful of well-known figures with that name. The Taoist term YuanYing 元嬰 refers to a state of primordial transcendence, often considered an intermediate phase on the path toward deity.
The author really nailed it with their courtesy names.
Wang 忘 means to forget. In English it may have negative connotations because it’s associated with a passive disease and loss of treasured memories. In Chinese the act of actively forgetting can also be a positive renunciation of worldly troubles, so the character is somewhat more romantic than an English speaker would assume.
Ji 機 / 机 is typically used in common speech to refer to machines, mechanical things, opportunities, worldly things that have many parts intricately connected with each other. In more metaphysical discussions, it implies the intertwined destinies and sophistication of the mundane.
I’ve seen a classy tea store selling leaf blends named WangJi, among a collection of other poetic references and reminders of the otherworldly. To forget the secular calculations and intricacies of the world is to live freely and without distractions; as an antonym of precision, it has heavy Taoist flavors because of its seclusive connotations.
Wu 無 / 无 means none, nil, the lack of.
Xian 羨 means envy. WuXian is a perfect name for someone who embodies the untamed, envious of none. His outlook on life is never to bemoan his fate, come what may. He doesn’t know the meaning of jealousy. He is complete in and of himself.
WangXian as a portmanteau is so clever – even though the other portmanteau is brilliant as well: WuJi 無機 / 无机 is pronounced exactly the same as the Chinese term for “untamed” 無羈 / 无羁 (yes, those are the two characters you see inside the red stamp next to the show’s title logo).
When a native speaker hears the term WangXian 忘羨, they get the basic meaning of “forgetting envies”, but at the same time they’re inevitably reminded of this famous idiom:
只羨鴛鴦不羨仙 Zhi Xian YuanYang Bu Xian Xian
Literally: Only envy the mandarin ducks, and not the deities. (Alternatively: A pair of love birds is more enviable than immortality.)
In a world of cultivators whose ultimate goal is to ascend into deity, lovers only envy the mandarin ducks, which are symbols of faithful monogamy and harmony, a tribute to growing old together, companions for life.
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