The Chinese word 德州 is formed by combining the character 德, which means "virtue" or, in the context of the city in Shandong, references a historical river name, with 州, meaning "prefecture" or "state", indicating an administrative region. For the Chinese city of Dezhou, this creates the literal meaning "Virtue Prefecture", while when used to refer to Texas, USA, it functions as a phonetic transliteration where 德 approximates the sound "Te-" and 州 conveys the concept of a state for "-xas".