The word "迈阿密" (Mài'āmì) is formed through a phonetic borrowing process, where three existing Chinese characters are selected purely for their sound to approximate the pronunciation of the English city name "Miami". Each character, 迈 (mài), 阿 (ā), and 密 (mì), loses its individual meaning in this context and instead functions as a syllable in a combined sound-based representation, creating a new proper noun for the foreign location within the Chinese language.