The Chinese word 番茄酱 (fānqiéjiàng) for "tomato ketchup" is a logical, descriptive compound formed through semantic combination: it begins with 番茄, a compound itself meaning "tomato" (literally "foreign eggplant"), and appends 酱, meaning "sauce" or "paste". Thus, the term is constructed transparently as "tomato-sauce", directly denoting the substance made from cooked and puréed tomatoes. This follows a common Chinese word-formation pattern where a specific noun modifier (番茄) is placed before a general category head (酱) to create a new, precise term.