Language is an explicit manifestation of human cognition, and the vocabulary system is a historical product of ethnic thinking developed to a certain stage. Taking core English and Chinese vocabulary as the research object, this paper traces the evolutionary trajectories of basic words in the two languages from an etymological perspective and explores the cognitive mechanisms behind them. The study finds that although English and Chinese belong to different language families, they exhibit cognitive commonalities in many respects, such as word-formation motivation and semantic generalization. These commonalities arise from shared ways of perceiving the objective world and conceptual pathways, providing a new basis for cross-linguistic understanding and cultural mutual learning. While tracing the origins, this paper focuses on comparative analysis, which not only deepens understanding of the cognitive nature of language but also facilitates theoretical dialogue in English and Chinese linguistic research.