To make it even more fun, for two-part names (such as Xiaolong, or Ruobing), sometimes the first part of the name is a 'generational name'; this occurs most often in large, traditional families, or organizations where hierarchy is very important (such as monasteries).
So, for example, I'll again point at my own family. My father is named 'Xiaonian', (Little Year); his sister is named 'Xiao3 yun2' (Little Cloud), and his brother is named 'Xiao3 jing1' (Little Clever). So in this case, the word 'Xiao3', 'Little', would be part of the generational name, whereas 'Nian', 'Yun', and 'Jing', respectively, would be their personal names.
Father's full name: Lai Xiaonian.
Lai=>Surname
Xiao=>Generational name
Nian=>Personal name.
Similarly, my grandfather on my mother's side had a huge number of brothers, sisters, and cousins; they all belonged to the 'Ke4' generation, and were of the 'Li' family. My grandfather is named Li Keyou; he has relatives named Li Keyong, Li Keming, Li Kedong, etc. etc. etc. This is done so that when people in a family meet, they immediately know what generation each of them belong to, and thus know where they are on the 'hierarchy', so to speak. However, this has grown less and less common with modernity, both because of the shedding of some old traditions, and also because the One Child Policy has made it effectively meaningless, for the most part, due to the much smaller family sizes. My own family has discarded it, and chose my own name without worrying about the generational name issue.
Generational names will come up especially often in Wuxia series that deals with Shaolin. This is because when monks enter the monastery, they discard their old names, and are assigned a monk name; the monk name itself composes of just the generational name and the personal name (as monks have no family, there is no family name). This works the same way as non-monastic generational names, so people of the 'Xuan' generation, for example, could be called 'Xuanci', 'Xuanku', 'Xuannan', 'Xuanbei', 'Xuandu', etc. etc. etc.
Traditionally speaking, the generational names are usually already pre-set via a generational poem; each character of the poem would be a generational name, and when the end of the poem is reached, it would either be extended or just start from the beginning again. Shaolin has a poem as well, written in the Yuan dynasty by the Abbot of that time, Fu Yu.
http://www.shaolinwolf.com/subsites/poem.htm