Year of the Goat, Sheep or Ram? Ewe Decide

The Chinese Year of the 羊 (“yáng”) starts on Thursday and still it seems like English speakers are debating whether to call it the year of the “sheep” or “goat,” with some rearing their head occasionally to make the case for “ram.” The confusion’s understandable. In Chinese the single character 羊 can be combined with the character 山, or mountain, to specify “goat”, or 綿 to specify “sheep.” We thought the conundrum might have been on your minds because, well, autocomplete:



The press has been wrestling with the horns of this dilemma. Some point to traditional Chinese herders’ rearing of goats to argue against sheep. On the other hand, celebrating the year of the sheep serves as a great excuse to buy absurdly cute merchandise.

Do the Internet’s users have a preference? We looked at the worldwide volume of Google searches for the phrases “year of the sheep”, versus “year of the goat” and “year of the ram”:

At first glance, it appears that in English at least, sheep bleat the loudest. Over the past week though, as anticipation for the holiday grew, searches for “year of the sheep” and “year of the goat” have been neck and neck:

Maybe there's a regional-differences story here? The Philippines had the highest search levels for “year of the sheep,” while the phrase “year of the ram” is used most commonly in India, followed by Canada and the U.S. “Year of the goat” was popular again in the Philippines, then Australia.

What is it about sheep/goats that the Philippines loves so much?

But let’s not wander too far from the pen: let’s take a look at how Chinese speakers search. For starters, comparing the Chinese word for goat 山羊 to sheep 綿羊 shows clearly that the goat is the king of the hill for Chinese speakers:

Searches for 山羊 (goat) have been rising all through 2014, and the related searches for the single character 羊 in English are mostly for “goat.” But therein lies an issue. That same result also shows that it’s not searches about the zodiac driving this—it’s one goat in particular, called Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf:

The Chinese children’s show Pleasant Goat is a huge hit among Chinese-speaking children worldwide. And to add to the confusion, the white fluffiness of Pleasant Goat suggests it is more of a sheep than a goat, at least to this Googler’s eyes...

Is Pleasant a goat in sheep’s clothing? Does this ambiguity extend to the very definition of what a sheep or a goat is to Chinese speakers? At the end of the day, does it really matter? Baa.

What does matter is that you and yours have a happy, healthy, and prosperous Year of the ____. 恭祝您羊年快樂，喜氣洋洋！

Posted by Joyce Hau, Communications Senior Associate, Google Asia Pacific