The Chinese word 克格勃 (Kègébó) is a direct phonetic transcription, or transliteration, of the Russian acronym "KGB" (КГБ), representing the Soviet-era security agency. Each character is chosen solely for its sound to approximate the Russian letters: 克 (kè) for "K", 格 (gé) for "G", and 勃 (bó) for "B", forming a loanword where the characters carry no semantic meaning related to the organization itself but collectively serve as its established Chinese name.