The word 夏威夷 is formed through a process of phonetic borrowing, where three existing Chinese characters are selected purely for how closely their pronunciations mimic the sounds of the foreign name "Hawaii". Each character represents one syllable: 夏 (xià) approximates "Ha", 威 (wēi) approximates "wai", and 夷 (yí) approximates the final "i" sound. The individual meanings of the characters (which can suggest "summer", "power", and "foreign" respectively) are entirely incidental and play no role in the word's formation; it is a direct sound-for-sound transliteration.