The Chinese word "景洪" is formed through the transliteration of its Dai language name, where the character "景" phonetically approximates the Dai term for "city" and "洪" approximates the term for "dawn", resulting in the combined meaning "dawn city". The characters were chosen primarily for their sound in Chinese, with their semantic elements, "景" (scenery) and "洪" (vast), being incidental to this phonetic adaptation.