The Chinese word for tomato, 番茄 (fānqié), is a compound noun formed through semantic description, literally translating to "foreign eggplant". The first character, 番 (fān), historically means "foreign" or "barbarian", indicating the plant's New World origins and its introduction to China via foreign trade (likely during the Ming or Qing dynasty). The second character, 茄 (qié), means "eggplant", referring to the plant's botanical family (Solanaceae) and its fruit's similar shape and structure to native eggplants. Thus, the term directly and descriptively labels the tomato as the "foreign version of an eggplant", a common method in Chinese for naming introduced flora.