The word 英格兰 is formed through a process of phonetic borrowing, where three existing Chinese characters are selected and combined solely for their sound to approximate the pronunciation of the foreign name "England". The characters 英 (yīng), 格 (gé), and 兰 (lán) are strung together not for their individual meanings (which are "hero", "grid", and "orchid", respectively), but because their spoken syllables collectively mimic the English sounds "Eng", "g" (for the "g" in "-gland"), and "lan". It is a conventionalized phonetic representation, with the first character 英 often becoming the standard shorthand for things related to Britain.