The word "仡佬族" is formed by combining the characters "仡" and "佬", which together constitute the name of the Gelao people, with the character "族" appended to indicate that it refers to an ethnic group. "仡" serves as a specific phonetic and semantic component for this group, "佬" often denotes people or elders in ethnic contexts, and "族" explicitly marks the term as an ethnic designation.