The Chinese word 星巴克 (Xīngbākè) is a phonetic transliteration of the English brand name "Starbucks," formed through a common Chinese localization practice where characters are chosen primarily for their sound rather than meaning. The first character 星 (xīng), meaning "star," was cleverly selected as it directly corresponds to the first syllable of "Star" and also carries a positive, celestial connotation. The remaining characters 巴 (bā) and 克 (kè) approximate the sounds of "bucks" with neutrally-meaningful characters, resulting in a cohesive term that sounds familiar to the original while allowing the first character to provide a meaningful and market-friendly anchor.