The Chinese word 丹佛 is formed through a process of phonetic transcription, specifically to represent the sound of the foreign place name "Denver". The characters 丹 (dān) and 佛 (fó) were chosen not for their individual meanings (which are "red" and "Buddha" respectively), but because their combined pronunciation in Mandarin approximates the English name. This is a standard method in Chinese for creating names for foreign locations, where the primary goal is to mimic the original sound using existing Chinese syllables and characters.