The Chinese word for "scorpion," 蝎子 (xiēzi), is formed through a combination of semantic and phonetic elements. The first character, 蝎, is a phono-semantic compound: the radical 虫 (chóng, meaning "insect" or "creature") indicates its category as a crawling animal, while the component 曷 (hé) primarily suggests its pronunciation. The second character, 子 (zi), is a common nominal suffix in Mandarin that often denotes a small thing or creature, and when added here, it transforms the more technical 蝎 into the everyday, colloquial noun 蝎子, following a typical pattern for naming small animals (e.g., 蜘蛛 for spider, 蚂蚁 for ant).