The Chinese word 亚利桑那州 is formed by phonetically translating the English name "Arizona" into characters that approximate its pronunciation, 亚 (yà) for "A", 利 (lì) for "ri", 桑 (sāng) for "so", and 那 (nà) for "na", followed by the character 州 (zhōu), which denotes "state" to specify its administrative category.