Language is the carrier of a nation’s culture and contains a wealth of cultural information. The origin of a name is the reason why something is named, which is closely related to the cultural concept of people in the time when the word was created. Therefore, it is possible to explore the cultural information behind the words by examining their origins. Qi Min Yao Shu is one of the four major agricultural books of ancient China and is known as the “Encyclopedia of Agriculture in Ancient China”. We selected four typical terms in Qi Min Yao Shu, farming tools, farming actions, farming places, and water conservancy facilities, and conducted an extensive cognate word association of these terms. On this basis, we explore the characteristics of the naming rationale of these farming words and interpret the cultural concepts in them. The study finds that the naming rationale of these words reflects the ancient “agricultural-oriented” thought, which is reflected in both farming practice and emotion. Secondly, the naming rationale of these words also contains the cultural concept of the ancient people’s pursuit of the unity of heaven, earth, things and people, that is, to accurately understand and use the objective laws of heaven, earth and things. Lastly, What is more profound is the philosophical thinking of the ancient people on the relationship between man and nature, which is reflected in the naming rationale of these words, reflecting the ancient people’s feelings of reliance on and reverence for nature, and reflecting the philosophical concept of “the unity of nature and human”.

The meaning of the word Di Chu (抵觸) was first carried by the character Di (牴). Due to the changes in the structural features of the glyphs that represent meaning, Di (牴) changed its semantic symbol to get other glyph Di (觝). Afterwards, due to the continuous generalization of word meaning, Di (抵) is used to express the generalized meaning of Di Chu (抵觸). Through in-depth analysis, it can be seen that because they have the same phonetic symbol Di (氐), the three words Di (牴), Di (觝) and Di (抵) have the same etymological meaning contact. And then, the three words can be used interchangeably with each other. In the process of using the literature, Di (牴), Di (觝) and Di (抵) can be replaced by other different Chinese characters to express the same meaning of Di Chu (抵觸), such as Di (𤚃), Di (𧣎), Di (𢪔), and so on. By combing and analyzing the the relationships between this group of characters in practical use, we can see that this group of characters constitute a complete inter character relationship in practical use by changing semantic symbols, changing phonetic symbols, making errors in semantic symbols, making errors in phonetic symbols, moving the position of phonetic symbols, complicating phonetic symbols, simplifying phonetic symbols, and loaning phonetic. In the process of the evolution of Chinese characters, there will often be some changes in the shape of the characters, which brings some difficulties to our learning and research process to a certain degree. Therefore, the study of the relationships between this group of characters in practical use can provide a variety of help for the in-depth study of Chinese characters. Firstly, it can provide more abundant materials for the study of the history of Chinese characters. Then, it is beneficial to promote the process of Chinese character related research. Furthermore, it has some guiding functions for improving the collection and revision of dictionaries.