depends on the hanzi its based on, though I'm going with chíen
If it helps, I think Ting-Lu comes from 鼎錄
dǐng lù (as in dinglu, a kind of tripod cauldron) and 鹿
lù (deer), the "Yu" part of Chi-Yu comes from 玉
yù (a precious stone or jade) and 魚
yú (fish), Chien-Pao comes from 劍
jian (sword) and 豹
bào (leopard) - I think they are meant to be pronounced like these words.
The Chien in Chien-Pao is sort of like shee-en, then, I think?
I don't know about Wo-Chien, though. I think I remember people tossing around "jianwo" as something snail-related before we knew its real name, but I don't think I ever found out what it was exactly. Khu had talked about the four of these as dinglu, yuyu, jianbao and jianwo before release, so their final names are definitely related to those!
Edit: last-minute commentary on Ting-Lu before we see its actual lore:
the combination of a bronze tripod cauldron and a deer is
a reference to this work of literature,
in which the titular "cauldron" is a reference to the Nine Tripod Cauldrons that
represent authority given to a ruler by the mandate of heaven, while the "deer" is an allusion to another iconic remark: "the Qin emperor lost his deer, and
tianxia (all under heaven) chased after it."
The latter was to say that, uh,
- after the Qin dynasty fell, "all under heaven" scrambled to claim what used to belong to that dynasty ("the deer"),
- but here,
tianxia is a pun, because the word
literally means "all under heaven / every mortal" but it has
taken on the meaning of political sovereigns instead - i.e. warlords, not the common people
Basically it says "the Qin dynasty fell, and all of the other
warlords immediately started fighting to claim as much as possible of what they left behind," and the "deer" represents the common people getting caught up in this conflict
Here we have a Pokémon that's a tripod cauldron and a deer, or more specifically a deer (the common people) entrapped by a tripod cauldron (the heavenly mandate of rulers), in reference to this
so it's cool that these four seem to have some kind of grudge against
this jerk king I've just heard about : D
The jade/fish pun is also meaningful - 玉
yù means a precious stone or jade, but 魚
yú means a fish
This is a common enough word association that fishes are considered symbolic of wealth, but
especially goldfish (what we were told the new fish is) because of some other Chinese wordplay - the word for goldfish, "Jin yu," is a homophone of "gold in abundance," in addition to jin by itself meaning gold and yù by itself meaning jade (so goldfish is homophonous with two valuables)
The joke also works in English because it's a goldfish aksjhfg
I was thinking Ting-Lu would somehow be themed after people fighting over power (and specifically be a victim of that kind of conflict?) and Chi-Yu would represent wealth, with both of these in mind - curious to find out if Chi-Yu's Violet entry suggests anything like that? O:
I did not get far enough to figure out anything neat for the other two though akfjgh
this was all from the middle of August so we didn't have a ton of context