The Chinese word "村长" (cūnzhǎng) is a compound noun formed by combining the character "村" (cūn), meaning "village," with the character "长" (zhǎng), which in this context means "head," "chief," or "leader." It follows a common and logical syntactic structure in Mandarin where the modifier (村, describing the type of unit) precedes the core noun (长, indicating the leadership role), directly and transparently creating the meaning "village head" or "village chief."