Tianlong

Tianlong (simplified Chinese: 天龙; traditional Chinese: 天龍; pinyin: tiānlóng; Wade–Giles: t'ien lung; lit. "heavenly dragon") is a flying dragon in Chinese mythology, a star in Chinese astrology, and a proper name.

The term tianlong combines tian "heaven" and long "dragon". Since tian literally means "heaven; the heavens; sky" or figuratively "Heaven; God; gods", tianlong can denote "heavenly dragon; celestial dragon" or "holy dragon; divine dragon".

Tianlong 天龍 is homophonous with another name in Chinese folklore. Tianlong 天聾 "Heavenly Deaf" (with the character long "deaf" combining the "ear radical" and a long 龍 phonetic element) and Diya 地啞 "Earthly Dumb" are legendary attendants to Wenchang 文昌, the patron deity of literature.

From originally denoting "heavenly dragon", Tianlong 天龍 semantically developed meanings as Buddhist "heavenly Nāgas" or "Devas and Nāgas", "centipede", and "proper names" of stars, people, and places.

Among Chinese classic texts, tian "heaven" and long "dragon" were first used together in Zhou Dynasty (1122 BCE-256 BCE) writings, but the word tianlong was not recorded until the Han Dynasty (207 BCE-220 CE).

...
Wikipedia