The Chinese word "瓦努阿图" is formed by selecting characters that phonetically approximate the syllables of the English name "Vanuatu": 瓦 (wǎ) for "Va", 努 (nǔ) for "nu", 阿 (ā) for "a", and 图 (tú) for "tu", resulting in a sound-based transliteration without semantic consideration.