World Culture; China

Monthly Archive: December Worl

Year of the Sheep, Goat or Ram?

Posted: February 18, 2015 - 12:11 , by Robert Mason
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A flock of ceramic sheep

Beginning on February 19th 2015 and ending on February 7th 2016 is the Year of the Sheep, or Goat, or Ram in the Chinese calendar. No other year of the Chinese lunar calendar seems to create quite so much confusion as the Year of the Sheep/Goat/Ram. The confusion probably stems from the Chinese term for all of these characters: "Yang". Hence in Chinese, Year of the Yang works perfectly, there is no confusion, and you can use any member of the caprinae subfamily (which includes sheep and goats) to figurally represent the year. However, in English we are left with this confusion.