Chinese Zodiac 2027: The Year of the Fire Goat

The Year of the Fire Goat

National Geographic names 2027 as the Year of the Fire Goat. Besides cycling through twelve animals, it explains, the Chinese lunar calendar also rotates through five traditional elements. The animal changes every year, but the element only changes every two years.

Twelve animals and five elements, National Geographic adds, mean that each distinct animal and element combination occurs once every sixty years. The University of Sydney describes the same sixty-year cycle.

Elements, stems and branches

The University of Sydney lists the five elements as metal, wood, water, fire and earth, and says the Fire element is determined by the Heavenly Stems. The V&A blog describes the older Chinese reckoning of years as two parts, a heavenly stem and an earthly branch, and says pairing an animal with each earthly branch goes back to very old times.

Goat, sheep or ram

CNN quotes Isaac Yue, who teaches Chinese mythology at the University of Hong Kong: the Chinese character yang can be translated as sheep, goat or ram, and even the gazelle is called yang in Chinese. Yue leans towards goat, because the ancient form of the character shows a pair of horns. CNN adds that the ram, a male sheep, is a third candidate, preferred by some who dislike the meek, docile characteristics associated with the sheep.

Colin Mackerras of the Griffith Asia Institute writes that a goat is specifically a “mountain yang” and a sheep is sometimes a “cotton yang”. Japan translates the word as sheep, he notes, while Vietnam identifies it as the goat. He calls all three usages correct, though his own preference is sheep. JSTOR says the goat seems to be the preferred choice of most Chinese people.

This site says Goat, but its sources also use sheep and ram.

What the tradition says about the animal

The V&A blog notes that the Chinese word for ram is pronounced yang, the same as the word for sun, and that the ram is therefore an auspicious symbol. JSTOR writes that people born in a Goat year are generally believed to be mild-mannered, kindhearted and quiet, while in the West goats are usually thought of as stubborn.

The V&A adds a caution. Using the Rabbit year as its example, it says that assigning a character by birth year is a fairly recent development, and that old Chinese texts do not mention such a belief.