The word "浪漫" is a phonetic and semantic loan formation from the English word "romantic". It was created by selecting two existing Chinese characters, "浪" (làng, meaning "wave" or "unrestrained") and "漫" (màn, meaning "overflowing" or "free-flowing"), primarily for their combined sound which approximates "ro-man". Beyond just sound, the characters were chosen brilliantly for their inherent meanings, which poetically evoke the sense of boundless, free-flowing emotion and imaginative wandering that defines the concept of romance, thus creating a term that is both an auditory imitation and a vivid conceptual translation.