Help me out with 午. Heisig says this means cow. Google translate and JCJP say it stands for horse.… - Feed Post by wahaj
Help me out with 午. Heisig says this means cow. Google translate and JCJP say it stands for horse. Which is it?
posted by wahaj
Comments 19
Konbanwa, Wahaj ^-^! In fact, that kanji does mean cow! It is pronounced "Ushi". However, sometimes translators arent always accurate (especially google translate) :P
no that kanji does not mean cow! that kanji means mid day. this kanji means cow 牛 see the difference? Cow = 牛 and midday = 午- Oh, whoops. Missed that point on top :P
horse is 馬
Yep, as other people already said, 午 doesn't actually mean either 'cow' or 'horse'!
馬 (うま) = 'horse'
牛 (うし) = 'cow'
午 (うま) = The seventh sign of the Chinese zodiac - the 'sign of the horse'.
A traditional clock with which Japan used to use to tell the time had the calendar day split into 12 parts, based on the 12 zodiac signs. The hour of the horse = 11am to 1pm (roughly), which in turn is why 午 also represents 'noon, midday'.
Btw, the zodiac symbol representing cow ('sign of the ox') = 丑 (うし), which is the second sign of the zodiac and was used for 1am to 3am.
(also, hey beeant! お久しぶり！ お元気ですか ^^)- oh yes 午 Horse Chinese Zodiac
hey mog86uk, 久しぶりです。元気ですよ。今頑張ってます。 
午is not horse, horse is 馬,cow is 牛
yeah, sometimes you can forgot which one is cow 牛 or 午 xD- Chinese characters are hieroglyphic, so you may noticed that the 牛 are with a horn.
- One character could have many meaning, so I checked the dictionary for sure. And I realized that the 午 could stand for horse too, but only in ancient chinese,not in today's chinese or japanese, basically.
This kanji- > 午 is different from this one -> 牛- @eagle90
Apparently, the animals of the Chinese zodiac were added to each of the '12 Earthly Branches' (十二地支) at a later date. 午 is just the name that was originally given to that branch. I'm surprised if 午 'wu' could be used in ancient Chinese to stand for 馬 'ma', when originally the Earthly Branches weren't linked specifically to animals?
I tried to find out the original meaning of 午, and it seems that its original meaning was probably 'pestle':
http://chinese-characters.org/meaning/5/5348.html#.U_RVGPka_ES
http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E5%8D%88 - The original meaning of 午 in 甲骨文(Oracle bone script) is the rope to control the horse. (in chinese as "御马索")
As you can see the 午 have 11 meaning, but not all of them are common, (in the tag "详细解释" which is "detailed explanation"),
I won't think about horse when i saw the 午 if i didn't look up the dict.
Sorry for my reference being chinese
http://www.zdic.net/z/16/xs/5348.htm - Thanks for that link. That that page is very interesting, although I can't really read Chinese. However, with a bit of kanji knowledge and my small understanding of Chinese particles and simplified hanzi, I could understand a lot more than I was expecting to.
That page doesn't seem to mention pestle at all under any of the tabs? However, this page seems to say something about it:
http://www.zdic.net/z/22/sw/8202.htm
Here's another web page which explains it much more easier and in English:
http://silkstory.net/hanzi_xiangxing/xiang155.html 
It is also important to not confuse 牛 and 午 with 千 (せん or thousand).
What a nice discussion. Very informative, thank you everyone. Such a small difference between the two kanji that I didn't even notice. Thanks, because of this discussion I doubt I will ever forget the two kanji. 馬 is a bit more complicated so that I will have to leave until it shows up in Heisig's book.- To mog86uk san, the original meaning of kanji were not always indicated well so the archeologist still have lots of work to do. I guess whether the pestle or the rope i said is the speculation from the shape of original 午 (a character like 8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7A-SyZAaBM#t=11)
The pestle in chinese is now 杵, i.e. 木(wood)+午.
The pestle theory I found are mostly in english, so I do a little work and found out that a book "甲骨文字研究" by郭沫若 (a late Qing dynasty ancient literal scholar) had said something about it .
The evolution of kanji was believe to originated from 甲骨文(Oracle bone script) to 金文 (bronze inscriptions), and 郭沫若 speculated that the bronze inscriptions was mislead the 午 as 杵.
But I dont know how he made the conclusion.
So the conclusion is that : the original meaning of 午 in 金文 is pestle while the original meaning of 午 in 甲骨文 is rope to control horse.
- Interesting stuff again. Another thing that is interesting is how the radical 缶 appears to have 午 contained within it? It appears this way in 金文, but doesn't seem so likely in 甲骨文:
http://www.zdic.net/z/21/zy/7F36.htm
http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?characterInput=%E7%BC%B6
As for 杵 (chǔ), what is the purpose of 午 (wǔ) in this hanzi? Are the sounds similar enough that its simply a phonetic component? because I can't see how the meaning in this hanzi could be 'rope to control a horse' or anything else to do with horses.
杵 also seems to suggest that pestles were mostly always made of wood, or might 木 represent what is being grinded by the pestle?
I probably spend too much time thinking about minor things like this... Probably dragged this topic on too long! :P - Found the answer to my question about whether 午 is just a phonetic component in 杵. This website says the purpose of 午 component in this hanzi is phonetic AND meaning:
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-etymology.php?zi=%E6%9D%B5
And also, on this page they claim 午 is the original form of 杵:
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/character-etymology.php?zi=%E5%8D%88
It helped me a lot, clicking the ? button next to "formation methods" to read the explanations of their terminology used on both those pages. I think my curiosity is satisfied for now. ^^
