The Chinese word 弗吉尼亚 (Fújíníyà) is a phonetic transliteration formed to approximate the sounds of the English name "Virginia". It is created by selecting Chinese characters whose pronunciations, when spoken in sequence, closely mimic the syllables of the foreign word, with each character (弗-fú, 吉-jí, 尼-ní, 亚-yà) representing a corresponding sound segment without regard to the individual meanings of the characters, which are irrelevant in this context. This is a standard method in Chinese for adapting foreign proper nouns, especially place names.