The word 民族 is formed through a conceptual combination of its two constituent characters: 民 (mín), meaning "the people" or "common people", and 族 (zú), meaning "clan", "family", or "a group sharing a common attribute". Together, they create a new, synthetic idea where 民 provides the notion of a populace or collective body of individuals, and 族 adds the dimension of a bonded group with shared identity. This fusion moves beyond a simple family or kinship group to conceptualize a larger, cohesive community of people, a "nation" or "ethnicity", united by common factors like culture, language, history, or territory.