When a foreign place name, or toponym, occurs in Chinese text, the problem arises of spelling it in Chinese characters, given the limited phonetics and restrictive phonology of Mandarin Chinese (making it very difficult to transcribe loanwords), and the possible meaning of those characters when treated as Chinese words. For example: However, if the country's or city's endonym is not internationally well-known, Chinese will often transcribe the endoynym or English name into Chinese characters. The exonyms below are all in Mandarin Chinese.