The Chinese word "巴拿马" (Bā ná mǎ) is a phonetic transliteration formed through the process of sound-borrowing, where three existing Chinese characters are selected not for their meanings but specifically for their approximate pronunciation in Mandarin to collectively mimic the English name "Panama". Each character corresponds to a syllable: "巴" (bā) for "Pa", "拿" (ná) for "na", and "马" (mǎ) for "ma", resulting in a compound word that is recognized solely as the name of the country, with no semantic connection to the original meanings of the individual characters (which could loosely be "hope", "take", and "horse", respectively).