The word 市民 is formed by combining two independent characters, each contributing its core meaning to create a new, unified concept. The first character, 市 (shì), originally depicted a marketplace and carries the meaning of "city" or "urban area". The second character, 民 (mín), represents "the people" or "populace". When joined, the word is conceptually constructed as "city-people", directly describing the inhabitants or citizens of a city, where the first element specifies the domain or type of the people indicated by the second.