熊 | xióng

In Mandarin Chinese, 熊 (Pinyin: xióng 🔊) means “bear” (a carnivoran mammal). Here is a possible mnemonic for those whose bear experience is limited to teddy bears: the pronunciation is similar to German schön 🔊 “beautiful” or non-standard (but widely understood) Russian щён “puppy”.

According to Wiktionary,

This character originally represented an onomatopoetic word [熊熊 {xióngxióng, “(of flame) raging”}]. Later its phonetic compound 能, the character for the Old Chinese word “bear”, was borrowed for another word. This character thus began to represent the word “bear” instead.

Lawrence J. Howell writes in his Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters:

As per 能 (bear) + 火 fire → bear (← ancient belief associating bears with the spirit of fire).

(火 has got reduced to the four short strokes 灬 on the bottom of 熊.)

True, the bear is a complex character, maybe because you are not supposed to mention him too often (just as you are not supposed to abuse words like “love”)? At least 熊 does not contain any kind of “dog” in it (but see below).

熊 is a “simplified” form of a traditional character 熊. I put “simplified” in quotes because it does not look like a simplification at all. Both hanzi have 14 strokes and you really need to look hard to spot the difference, which boils down to a couple of strokes going askew.

Now there are bears and there are bears:

• 白 + 熊 = 白熊 (báixióng): polar bear
• 人 + 熊 = 人熊 (rénxióng): brown bear
• 马 + 熊 = 马熊 (mǎxióng): another word for brown bear (literally “horse-bear”)
• 狗 + 熊 = 狗熊 (gǒuxióng): Asian black bear (literally “dog-bear”)
• 浣 + 熊 = 浣熊 (huànxióng 🔊): raccoon (literally “wash-bear”)
• 熊 + 猫 = 熊猫 (xióngmāo 🔊): panda (literally “bear cat”)

Well, phylogenetically, raccoons are not bears (and red pandas are not foxes), but here you are.

More photos related to bears, beads and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

戌 | xū

In Mandarin Chinese, 戌 (Pinyin: xū 🔊) is the eleventh of twelve earthly branches. It corresponds to the Year of the Dog (狗) of the Chinese zodiac; the ninth month; the hour of the Dog (7 pm to 9 pm, “the time when Dogs carry out their duty of guarding the houses”); and the direction 300° (where 0° is north). Its associated “fixed element” is Earth, 土.

The character 狗 refers to any actual dog while 戌 refers to the “zodiac dog”. 戌 is thought to be derived from a pictogram for axe, as can be seen in many historical forms of the character.

More photos related to dogs, zodiac and sea glass @ Shutterstock.

狗 | gǒu

In Mandarin Chinese, 狗 (Pinyin: gǒu 🔊) is a noun that means “dog”. The Dog is one of the twelve-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac and is associated with the earthly branch 戌.

Unfortunately for dog lovers, this word also could be used as an adjective meaning “despicable” or “nasty”. Thus 狗男女 (gǒu nánnǚ) is not a man (男) and a woman (女) innocently walking a dog but a “couple in an illicit love affair”.

According to Uncle Hanzi, 狗 is a phono-semantic compound of phonetic 句 (gōu) and semantic 犭, which itself is a radical form of 犬, archaic or dialectal word for dog.

More photos related to dogs, zodiac and sea glass @ Shutterstock.