The word 亚洲 (Yàzhōu, meaning "Asia") is formed through a historical translation process combining phonetic borrowing and meaningful labeling. The character 亚 (Yà) is the first syllable taken from the phonetic transliteration of "Asia", originally 亚细亚 (Yàxìyà), which was established by early Jesuit missionaries in China. This phonetic root 亚 was then combined with the character 洲 (zhōu), which means "continent" or "landmass", to create a compound that clearly denotes the continent of Asia. Thus, the term merges an established sound for the foreign name with a native Chinese semantic indicator for a large geographic region.