The Chinese word 凯迪拉克 is formed through phonetic transliteration of the English brand name "Cadillac", with each character selected to approximate the original sounds: 凯 (kǎi) for "Ca", 迪 (dí) for "di", 拉 (lā) for "la", and 克 (kè) for the final "c" sound, creating a spoken resemblance using standard Chinese characters.