The word 冰淇淋 is formed through a process of phonetic borrowing and semantic association. It directly mimics the sounds of the English word "ice cream" (roughly bīng qí lín), where the first character 冰 (bīng), meaning "ice", was chosen both for its sound and its logical meaning. The subsequent characters 淇 (qí) and 淋 (lín) were selected primarily for their phonetic value to complete the sound of "cream", with their original meanings (like "river name" and "to pour") being largely irrelevant to the final concept, resulting in a compound that is essentially a phonetic translation.