The compound word 闻名 (wénmíng), meaning "famous" or "well-known", is formed through a logical verb-object grammatical relationship between its two constituent characters: 闻 (wén), which means "to hear", and 名 (míng), which means "name" or "reputation". Literally, the combination translates to "to hear the name", implying that one's name or reputation has been widely heard of. This figurative sense, where the act of hearing a name signifies widespread recognition and fame, is a classic example of how Chinese creates abstract meanings through the concise, semantic pairing of concrete characters.