The word 橄榄 (gǎnlǎn), meaning "olive", is a disyllabic compound formed through the common Chinese morphological process of binome creation, where two characters with similar or related meanings are combined to denote a single, specific concept. In this case, both 橄 (gǎn) and 榄 (lǎn) individually refer to aspects of the olive tree or its fruit, with "榄" often appearing alone in classical texts to mean "olive". Their pairing creates a more stable, modern term that phonetically and semantically solidifies the reference to the olive plant and its produce, typical of how many plant names are constructed in Chinese.