The word 凯瑟琳 is formed through a process of phonetic transliteration, specifically to represent the sounds of a foreign name, most commonly "Catherine" or "Katharine", in Chinese. It is constructed by selecting three pre-existing Chinese characters (凯 kǎi, 瑟 sè, 琳 lín) whose pronunciations, when combined, approximate the syllables of the original name. Each character is chosen solely for its sound value in this context, not for its individual meaning, resulting in a new compound that functions purely as a sound-based representation for use in the Chinese language.