The Chinese word **旗子** (qízi), meaning "flag" or "banner," is a compound formed through a common morphological process in Mandarin. It combines the core morpheme **旗** (qí), which historically derives from a pictogram representing a flag and serves as the semantic root indicating "flag" or "standard," with the suffix **子** (zi). This suffix **子** is often added to single-character nouns to form a disyllabic word, a pattern that became prevalent in the history of the language for phonetic balance and colloquial flow; in this case, it nominalizes and slightly familiarizes the term without altering the core meaning, resulting in the everyday word for "flag."