The word 如何 is formed through the combination of two independent, ancient characters: 如 (rú), which originally depicted a woman following commands, carrying the core meaning of "to follow" or "according to", and 何 (hé), a pictograph of a person carrying a load on a shoulder pole, used as an interrogative pronoun meaning "what" or "which". Their fusion created a classical Chinese phrase literally meaning "according to what?" which, through conventional usage, semantically condensed into a single lexical unit expressing the abstract concept of "how" or "in what way".