The Chinese word 阿司匹林 (āsīpǐlín) is a phonetic loanword, formed through the direct transliteration of the sound of the foreign term "aspirin". Each character is chosen not for its meaning, but for how closely its pronunciation in Mandarin approximates the syllables of the original brand name: 阿 (ā) for "a", 司 (sī) for "spi", 匹 (pǐ) for "ri", and 林 (lín) for the concluding "n" sound. This is a standard method in Chinese for incorporating foreign nouns, especially technical and pharmaceutical terms, resulting in a word that is phonetically recognizable but semantically unrelated to the individual characters' original meanings.