BRIC was coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill in 2001 (Brazil, Russia, India, China). South Africa joined in 2010 making it BRICS. The Chinese rendering jīnzhuān (gold brick) is a felicitous phonetic-and-semantic match for BRICS.
mistakes
When used for the bloc it is a proper noun, often extended as 金砖国家 'BRICS countries' or 金砖峰会 'BRICS summit'. The literal 'gold brick' sense is a separate common noun.
