乌鲁木齐 is formed through phonetic transliteration, where each character is selected solely for its sound to approximate the foreign name "Urumqi" from a Turkic language: 乌 (wū) for "u", 鲁 (lǔ) for "ru", 木 (mù) for "m", and 齐 (qí) for "qi", with no combined meaning derived from the individual characters' definitions.