The Chinese term "犹他州" (Yóutā zhōu) for the U.S. state of Utah is formed through a standard transliteration process, where "犹他" (Yóutā) is a phonetic approximation of the English name "Utah," using characters chosen primarily for their sound rather than meaning, and the suffix "州" (zhōu), meaning "state" or "prefecture," is added to semantically categorize it as an administrative division.