The Chinese word "大阪" (Dàbǎn) for the Japanese city of Osaka is a direct phonetic and semantic borrowing from the original Japanese kanji 大阪 (Ōsaka). In this formation, the characters were chosen primarily for their sound to approximate the Japanese pronunciation—"大" for "ō" (big) and "阪" for "saka" (slope)—while also retaining a literal meaning ("big slope") that historically described the city's terrain. This represents a common method in Chinese for transcribing foreign place names, where characters with neutral or relevant meanings are selected to mimic the foreign sound without creating a nonsensical compound.