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An x in Pinyin is pronounced somewhere between the English 's' and 'sh' sounds. I'm not familiar with these names but from all of the Mandarin Chinese I've studied, I would say they are pronounced as one syllable each. Hope this helps a bit!

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Sara

There was a New Zealander-Chinese girl in the news here lately named Qian Xun, pronounced shahn shoon (approximately). If Xun is 'shoon' I would instinctively pronounce Xian 'shahn' and Xan 'shan'. But that's just extrapolation, I could be very wrong.

Usually it's transcribed as the sound "sh", not sure about how it affect the meaning, that would depend on ideograms.

I would say it's more chee-AHN and chahn, but it depends on what signs you are using to write the names.

for Xian I would automatically prounce it Christian as X is the greek letter for Christ. But then I may not be in the majority for this at all!