The Chinese word 罗曼史 (luómànshǐ) for "romance" is a phonetic loanword formed through transliteration, where the characters were chosen primarily to approximate the sounds of the English word "romance" (luó for "ro-", màn for "-man-", and shǐ for "-ce"), rather than to convey the original meaning through their individual semantics; however, the characters 罗曼 (often associated with "Roman" or "exotic charm") and 史 (history) collectively evoke a sense of "a tale or history of exotic charm," which serendipitously reinforces the conceptual meaning of a romantic story or narrative.