The pictophonetic character "Qun" first appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period. In the early days, it was mostly composed of upper and lower structures. The upper part is the word "Jun", the original meaning is monarch, and it is regarded as an ideographic phonetic side. "Qun" and "Jun" are combined into one, which are used as phonetic part and literary part respectively. The lower part is "sheep". Sheep like to flock, so the flock is marked with "sheep". During the Warring States period, this kind of structure was the mainstream structure, and the non-mainstream structure either omitted the components or was easy to make. Xiao Zhuan in Shuo Wen Jie Zi inherited the mainstream structure of the previous generation, and the regular script after the change was "Yong", and there were also "groups" with left and right structures. When sorting out Chinese characters in modern times, the word "group" was taken as the positive body, and the word "Yong" was excluded as the variant.
The intention of Chinese characters to create words and the actual meaning of words often cannot be equated, and so can the word "qun". Throughout the unearthed documents and handed down documents, the word "group" does not specifically refer to the usage of "sheep". "The Book of Songs Xiaoya has no sheep": "Who said that you have no sheep, three hundred dimensional group." Herd is used to describe sheep here. Another example is the Book of Changes: "Things are grouped." The "group" here refers to the same kind of things. So the word "group" only refers to "people or things gathered together". There are naturally a large number of people in groups, so human beings are also called "the masses".