I only know about Japanese but in the past characters could be chosen based on their pronunciation and not just their meaning e.g. 仏蘭西 (Buddha, Orchid, West, fu ran su, France). This is called ateji:
The ateji for Malaysia is 馬来, Horse, come, ma rai.
Nowadays loanwords are usually written alphabetically instead of ateji. フランス and マレーシア. The old way is still written for abbreviations; 仏 is the equivalent of writing "Fr" in English.
An interesting case is America (亜米利加）where the abbreviation is 米 (pronounced "bei") not 亜 (pronounced "a") because A is for Asia! (亜細亜).
As any one reading HN should know, naming things is hard...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateji
The ateji for Malaysia is 馬来, Horse, come, ma rai.
Nowadays loanwords are usually written alphabetically instead of ateji. フランス and マレーシア. The old way is still written for abbreviations; 仏 is the equivalent of writing "Fr" in English.
An interesting case is America (亜米利加）where the abbreviation is 米 (pronounced "bei") not 亜 (pronounced "a") because A is for Asia! (亜細亜).
As any one reading HN should know, naming things is hard...