'Year of the Sheep' or 'Year of the Goat'? |
Under the Chinese system, 2003 is referred to as the Year of the Goat or the Year of the Sheep. Sometimes you'll find Year of the Ram, but never Year of the Ewe, Year of the Wether, Year of the Billy Goat or Year of the Nanny Goat -- obviously not dignified enough for the zodiac! So, which is correct, Year of the Sheep or Year of the Goat?
Officially, 2003 belongs to the sign 
wèi.
This is the eighth of the so-called twelve Earthly Branches 
dìzhī,
part of a complex system of naming years, months, days, and hours developed
by the ancient Chinese. Each Earthly Branch is identified with a different
animal, the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. Wèi is
identified with the 
yáng.
What is a yáng?
Therein lies a problem. Look up a Chinese-English dictionary and you will find
that yáng means
'sheep'. But yáng does
not actually mean 'sheep' at all. To find the real meaning, you need to look
up a monolingual Chinese dictionary. The definition of yang 2 is
as follows (from Xiandai han'yu cidian):
A ruminant mammal, generally with horns on its head. Divided into a number of types, including
A little further investigation reveals that:
In other words, goats, sheep, and antelopes are all different types of yáng. Since only the goat and the sheep have been domesticated, the Chinese generally divide yáng into two types: shānyáng ('goats') and miányáng ('sheep').
Given that yáng is
a general term for both sheep and goats, it shouldn't be unthinkingly translated
as 'sheep'. It could be either. For instance, 
yángròu or
'yáng meat'
is commonly eaten in China. Many non-Chinese assume that yángròu is
mutton. That's how it's defined in Chinese-English dictionaries. But go to
one of the grassland areas where they catch and slaughter a 'sheep' for you
to eat, and you'll be in for a surprise. The so-called 'sheep' is not of the
woolly kind, it's a cute young goat with long straight hair. Goat meat may
actually be more common than mutton in China, partly because it doesn't have
the strong flavour that mutton has. The little sign below, from outside a small
local restaurant in Hainan, is a graphic illustration of the possibility that
your may
be goat meat, showing the characters worked into what looks like the picture
of a goat.
In other words, Year of the Goat and Year of the Sheep are equally correct
because yáng covers
both types of animal. The animal that goes with 
yáng-nián ('year
of the yáng')
is often shown as a goat, but there is no ironclad rule about this.
The problem does not end here. The Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese have all borrowed the Chinese zodiac and use it to name the years. What is more, both Japanese and Vietnamese have separate words for sheep and goats, which means that they must make a choice: Is the zodiac animal a sheep or a goat? (I won't discuss Korean as it is beyond the scope of this site. I would be grateful for any information about Korean.)
The words for 'sheep' and 'goat' in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese are as follows.
| Language | Sheep | Goat |
| Chinese |  /  miányáng |
 shānyáng |
| Japanese |  hitsuji |
 yagi |
| Vietnamese |  |
 |
The Japanese use the Chinese character to
write the word hitsuji meaning 'sheep'. In other
words, the character unequivocally
means 'sheep' in Japanese.
This creates a dilemma -- how to write the word yagi meaning
'goat'? Since Chinese doesn't have a character for 'goat', the Japanese had
to devise a different solution. They took the Chinese word for 'goat', i.e. ('mountain
sheep') read it yagi. Just another of those little
quirks of Japanese writing that is best explained by referring back to Chinese.
In the zodiac, 
quite
naturally becomes hitsuji-doshi in Japanese --
the Year of the Sheep.
What of Vietnamese? The Vietnamese pronunciation of the Eighth Earthly branch, ,
is 
. Under the Vietnamese
system is unequivocally
identified with (the 'goat'),
and not with (the 'sheep').
Thus, 
(the
'year of ') is unmistakably
the Year of the Goat.
What the above linguistic analysis doesn't answer is the historical question of how it got this way, in particular:
- Why did the Japanese assign the character to hitsuji ('sheep')
and not yagi ('goat')? Was there some factor
in ancient times that swung the pendulum that way -- perhaps yáng did mean
'sheep' in ancient China, or perhaps the Japanese simply felt more familiar
with sheep than with goats?
- Why did the Vietnamese identify with
the goat rather than the sheep, which it was theoretically possible to do?
Is it because the Chinese generally identified yáng-nián 'year
of the yáng'
with the goat and the Vietnamese simply followed suit?
I'm afraid that I have no answer to these questions. Any information gratefully received!
