The Chinese word 男爵 (nánjué) for "baron" is a semantic compound formed by combining two characters: 男 (nán), meaning "male", and 爵 (jué), meaning "nobility" or "peerage rank". It is a direct, descriptive translation of the Western aristocratic title, constructed using native Chinese morphemes to convey the concept of a "male noble of a specific rank". This formation follows a common pattern in Chinese for creating formal titles by specifying both gender and social status, paralleling similar constructions like 公爵 (gōngjué, "duke") and 伯爵 (bójué, "count").