The Chinese word "布朗" is formed through a process of phonetic borrowing from a foreign language, specifically to approximate the sound of the English surname "Brown". It is created by combining two existing Chinese characters, "布" (bù) and "朗" (lǎng), which are chosen solely for their phonetic value, "bù" for the initial "Br" sound and "lǎng" for the "own" sound, while their original individual meanings (such as "cloth" and "bright", respectively) are largely disregarded in this context, resulting in a new term used primarily as a proper name.