The word 佛罗里达 is formed through a process of phonetic translation, where individual Chinese characters are selected not for their meanings, but purely for how closely their pronunciations approximate the sounds of the English name "Florida". The characters 佛 (fó), 罗 (luó), 里 (lǐ), and 达 (dá) are strung together to mimic the syllable flow of "Flor-ri-da", creating a recognizable sound-based equivalent while the original meanings of the characters (which relate to things like "Buddha", "gauze", "inside", and "reach") become irrelevant.