The word "拉丁美洲" is formed by combining the phonetic transliteration "拉丁" for "Latin", using the characters 拉 (lā) and 丁 (dīng) to approximate the sound, with the semantic component "美洲" meaning "American continent", where 美 (měi) references America and 洲 (zhōu) means continent, thereby specifying the region of Latin America.