Year of the Cat OR Year of the Rabbit?
February 3, 2011 By Northwest Asian Weekly
Editor’s note: Thanks to all the readers who pointed out that mao is not rabbit in Mandarin or
Cantonese. We got this information from a news source that quoted Philippe Papin, an expert
on Vietnamese history at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. He was quoted as
saying, “The Chinese word for rabbit is ‘mao’, which sounds like ‘meo’ in Vietnamese, where it
means cat. As the sound of the word changed, so did its meaning.” Vivian (reporter) sent Papin
an e-mail to find out more on what he meant and he responded with:
Actually, the article of AFP has been printed before I could check what was written exactly, and
the consequence is that my quoting is a bit confusing, too fast, not precise enough. But it’s not
false. I will try to explain the problem.
1/ The Chinese word for Rabbit is “tu” (兔), while “mao” (猫) also means Cat. No possible
confusion at this step.
2/ But there is a little-used word for Rabbit in old Chinese (卯) that’s also pronounced mao.
Chinese people used this little-used word since a long time, and even now (year 乙卯 for
example). They could have confused both, because of the sound, but they did not.
3/ But in Vietnam, people made the confusion (willingly or not, I dont’t know) : (Rabbit 卯
sounds mao) —> (mao read like 猫 = Cat). And this mao becomes mèo in vietnamese, since a
long time, strengthened the confusion
4/ Vietnamese people used to do that, I mean they used to change the meaning of some Chinese
character following the sound. It’s not the first time, and that’s why I believe they did it in this
precise case.
By Vivian Nguyen
Northwest Asian Weekly
https://nwasianweekly.com/2011/02/year-of-the-cat-or-year-of-the-rabbit/