The word "欧洲" (Ōuzhōu), meaning "Europe", is formed through a common Chinese method of creating geographical names by combining a chosen character for its sound with another for its meaning. The first character, "欧" (Ōu), is used primarily for its phonetic value to approximate the first syllable of the name "Europe". The second character, "洲" (zhōu), means "continent", providing the clear semantic category. Thus, the word is a phonetically-transcribed and semantically-labeled compound, where one part hints at the pronunciation of the foreign term and the other part defines its nature.