The Chinese word 澳洲 (Àozhōu) for "Australia" is a phonosemantic compound formed through a combination of phonetic borrowing and semantic categorization. The first character 澳 (Ào) was chosen primarily for its phonetic approximation to the first syllable of "Australia" (and historically, the Latin "Australis"), while also carrying a semantic connotation of a "deep bay" or "inlet", possibly alluding to the continent's coastline. The second character 洲 (zhōu) means "continent" or "landmass", providing a clear semantic category that classifies it as a geographical continent. Thus, the term is a logical and standardized construct, typical of modern Chinese geographical nomenclature, where a sound-suggesting character is paired with a meaning-indicating character.