As the important creation by ancestors in early Chinese history, both Chinese character and architecture reflect understanding of Chinese people of the world. Early Chinese architecture has not been preserved due to its special material of soil and wood, so the study of early architecture can only be done with the help of archaeological sites and records in ancient books. The ancient Chinese characters, as ideographs, recorded the form and content of early architecture with their shape and meaning. The study of the formation of Chinese character can clarify the isomorphic feature of form and meaning between Chinese characters and architecture, providing theoretical support for the study of the evolution of architectural types based on the form and meaning of Chinese characters. Since there is a certain mutual proof between ancient Chinese characters and ancient architecture, the analysis is further based on the inscriptions on oracle bone scripts, jinwen（金文） and the residential architecture characters in pre-Qin literature, to analyze the type of residential architecture and the connotation of important buildings and provides clues for the deduction and restoration of early residential building types in China in the absence of early architectural sites. In the first part, from the perspective of cultural semiotics, it is pointed out that both Chinese characters and traditional Chinese architecture are a kind of symbols, reflecting the conceptual archetypes of human collective society together. By analyzing the symbolism of the Chinese character “yi（一）、er（二）、san（三）” and the space of early Chinese architecture, it discusses the specific representations of the different components of the Chinese character on the concept of space and time of early Chinese people in traditional Chinese culture, and the specific representations of the space and components of traditional Chinese architecture on the concept of space and time of early Chinese people. Then，through the “structure-function” analysis in Chinese character morphology, the specific ways and results of different structures of Chinese characters on architectural form and function are discussed. It is proposed that the shape and meaning of the character can completely express the whole content of the Chinese ancient architecture it refers to, and can be used as a criterion for the classification of the building. In the second part, in order to form a more comprehensive understanding of the types of residential buildings in early China, based on the Shuowen Jiezi （说文解字）, supplemented by the excavated systematic early Chinese characters, it have exhaustively counted the characters related to residential buildings in oracle-bone inscriptions, jinwen （金文）, and Pre-Qin documents, which form the basis of the research in this paper, and categorized them according to the meaning of textual configurations, so as to discuss the characteristics and connotations of the different types of residential buildings in early China in a more intuitive way by means of quantitative analysis and diagrammatic representation. Through quantitative analysis and graphical representation, the characteristics and connotations of different types of residential buildings in early China are discussed more intuitively. At the same time, based on the statistical results, it analyzed the components of different architecturaltypes in terms of form and function, and symbolism, and summarize the characteristics of the residential buildings they represent. In the third part, based on the statistics and analysis of the previous characters, combined with the early ruins and documentary records, the five types of residential buildings, namely, “caves （穴）”, “nests（巢）”, “palaces（宫室）”,“ mansions（家宅）” and “pavilions（楼阁）”, were mainly studied, and the characters contained in each type were interpreted one by one, and the specific architectural forms and functions reflected were investigated, and then, by synthesizing and comparing the similarities and differences in the architectural images expressed in the texts contained in the same building type, the horizontal, vertical, and semi-subterranean cave dwellings in the early cave dwellings, the different nesting spaces expressed in the early nesting dwellings by the words kang（康）, geng（庚）, and yong（庸）, etc.， the architectural spaces comprising the palaces in the early period, the early house spaces named by different standards, and the early “lou（楼） and ge （阁）” buildings are all discussed in depth, then a more comprehensive understanding of the above five types of residential buildings is formed.