The word "阎罗" is formed through phonetic transliteration from Sanskrit, where the character "阎" (yán) approximates the sound "Ya" and "罗" (luó) approximates "ma" or "ra", together representing "Yama", the name of the king of hell in Buddhist tradition. This combination results in a disyllabic term that uses Chinese characters primarily for their sound values to replicate the foreign word, without deriving meaning from the individual characters' semantics in this context.