Abstract: In the matter of plant names and their corresponding original plants, there exist innumerous examples in the world that different plants share the same name or the same plant has different names, which would easily cause confusion. Thus it is necessary to discriminate them. This paper took the word lilyas the research object. When it was searched as a keyword and a subject word on 2 websites: http://scholar. google. com and http://apps. web of knowledge. com, 534 000 and 11 734 pieces of information were collected respectively. However, when the keyword and the subject word was changed to lilium, only 27 000 and 6 087 pieces of information were obtained respectively. Based on this, these words and phrases containing lilywere classified and analyzed. The results show that: lilyoriginally referred to genus Lilium plants, but the words and phrases containing lilyhave a very broad meaning, which not only just imply Lilium, but also refer to Begoniaceae, Amaryllidaceae, Araceae, new hybrid plants, etc. Even some animal names also contain this word. In conclusion, the word lilyis used widely and it is difficult to determine all terms containing it precisely. So, more attention should be paid when we use this word to make literature research and other related researches.