The word "德州" is formed through a historical-geographic compounding process where "德" (Dé), originally referring to the De River, a tributary of the Yellow River in ancient China, is combined with "州" (zhōu), a historical term for an administrative prefecture or region. Thus, it literally means "the prefecture/region of the De River", naming the area after this geographic feature. This same principle of combining a defining element ("德") with an administrative suffix ("州") was later applied in transliteration to represent "Texas" in the United States, though in that case "德" is used solely for its phonetic sound (dé) to approximate "Tex-".