I think what you mean is compound words vs other words?

Wikipedia says there are lots of compound words in English.

Plaintiff is borrowed from old french. Litigation from Latin…

I suppose it boils down to when and under what circumstances a term was needed to describe something. Sometimes there was a word from another language available. Or the whole subject came from a different culture. And sometimes they just described it with a compound of what it resembles. And how they did it depends on when it happened.