The Chinese word "捷克" (Jié kè) for "Czech" is a phonetic transcription formed through a process called transliteration, where characters are selected primarily for their sound rather than meaning to approximate the pronunciation of the foreign name. The characters 捷 (jié, meaning "quick" or "victory") and 克 (kè, meaning "to overcome" or "gram") were chosen because their combined spoken sound closely mimics the English "Czech" or the beginning of "Czechia", following a historical convention for rendering European country names into Chinese, often via an intermediary language. While the individual characters have their own meanings, in this context they function purely as phonetic symbols, creating a standardized label for the country in the Chinese linguistic system.