Talk:Earthly Branches

Directions
It is possible someone can add the English translations [meanings] for the 24 Directions? I only see four English words North, South, East, West given - 20 more remain without clarity. Thank You In Advance. 4.238.237.18 01:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the version today, it looks like 8 directions are translated (north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west, northwest). To the best of my knowledge, English doesn't have specific names for each of the 24 listed directions.

I thought it was interesting to read the paragraph following the table, about a 48-point compass, and adding an additional midpoint (for 96 directions total) by combining the names of the nearest two directions. English does this with the 4 cardinal directions... any compass direction between about 22.5 and 67.5 degrees is referred to as "northeast", but the actual lines between north/northeast/east are sometimes vaguely defined. If we need more than 8 directions, we use terms like "north-northeast" to refer to the area between north and northeast... so you would end up with the following table of names and directions:

But this table has 16 entries, while the Chinese table has 24. So the systems are not orthogonal... the direction names are a little less specific in the English system, and thus there isn't a single name to correspond to each direction in the Chinese system. I think this is why there aren't translations for each Chinese direction...

Infinoid 15:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Also please note there is a 32-point English system described on the Boxing the compass page. Written by smarter people than me :)

You could find enough names in that system to fill in the blanks on the Earthly Branches page, but the actual angles (in degrees) don't match up exactly. I wouldn't really call them "translations" - they'd be more like "closest equivalents", I think. Also, until today (after reading the Boxing the compass page), I had never heard of things like "SEbE". So I'm hardly an expert in such matters.

Infinoid 18:12, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Ancient chinese put Zi (South) on the top. I changed the image.--刻意(Kèyì) 18:08, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Kazakh version
Since the image is of a fountain representing the Kazakh version of the 12 signs, should we not have discussion of the Kazakh version here? Or at least a link to it? LordAmeth (talk) 23:10, 30 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Done. Vmenkov (talk) 03:41, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Awesome. Thank you. LordAmeth (talk) 11:52, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Why Turkish?
Pardon my ignorance, but why is there Turkish in the table? I understand that Japanese and other East Asian languages are included, as they were in the same culture sphere. But that can't be assumed for Turkish. Nowhere else does the article refer to any special association of the Earthly Branches with Turkish culture. Since this has been added by an anonymous user who has not edited since and is therefore not available for comment, I think we should simply revert the change. &mdash; Sebastian 22:26, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


 * A twelve year cycle of animal names was used throughout south-central Asia, including Turkey and Iran, which was derived from the Chinese-Uighur calendar of western China. However, including the Turkish and Farsi names, not to mention Nepalese and equivalent names in lanquages throughout south-central Asia, including Arabic, will overwhelm the table. See Kazakh version above and the image at the head of the article refering to their use in Khazakhstan. — Joe Kress (talk) 04:10, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your support. I'm not surprised that the animal cycle also played an important role in Khazakhstan - which was much closer to China than to regions using other calendars. (Almaty is only 200 km from the modern Chinese border.) But, at least in Islamic times, I would be amazed if Turkey and Iran had used anything but the Hijri calendar. &mdash; Sebastian 05:16, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * You misunderstand me. The twelve animal cycle was used in the calendars of all south-central Asian countries, including the calendars of Turkey and Iran. They only use the Islamic calendar for religious purposes, not for official government use. The twelve-animal cycle was not officially abandoned in Turkey until 1927 when it adopted the Gregorian calendar. Similarly, it was not officially abandoned in Iran until 1925 when the Iranian calendar adopted Zoroastrian month names. Despite these official decisions, the twelve-animal cycle is still known and used in both Turkey and Iran. Please see Chinese-Uighur calendar and Iranian calendar. — Joe Kress (talk) 06:34, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Interesting! That's what I love about working on Wikipedia: You always learn something new. I think this information would be a great addition to the article. Would you have sources for it? &mdash; Sebastian 16:30, 3 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read about the Turkish cycle. I am currently researching the Iranian calendar because some of the information in the article is wrong. But the sources (principally long articles in Iranian encyclopedias) sometimes disagree and are not precise enough. But more info on the 1925 law is no doubt within them. — Joe Kress (talk) 16:32, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Jupiter
Is there a reason why this page is linked to Jupiter?

Joeygbh (talk) 04:22, 15 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The article explains why. Jupiter takes about 12 years to move around the ecliptic, which corresponds to the 12 earthly branches when they are applied to years. This link was made in China as early as the Han dynasty. — Joe Kress (talk) 06:23, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Correct translations?
Are the latin-alphabet names for dragon and horse correct?

Although I don't understand Chinese myself, a native speaker tells me the Chinese word for dragon is "long" and horse should be something like "ma". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.169.72.155 (talk) 11:04, 4 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Archaic vs modern words, perhaps? —Tamfang (talk) 21:49, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Dragon Pin Yin
on my traslater dragon is Long, not Chen.

--Iching4096 (talk) 12:51, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Origin of Earthly Branches
In the section "Origin" the first sentence tells us that "This system was built from observations of the orbit of Jupiter.". From a historical point of view, this cannot be "the true origin", as the Sexagenary cycle was first used for the recording of days (as a kind of "week" of 60 days, running without any kind of interruption through both lunar months and seasonal years) in the late Shang era about 1250 B.C.E. Only about 1000 years later (in the Qin and early Han eras, as earliest about 250 B.C.E.) do we find any evidence for use of the Sexagenary cycle for recording of years. As Jupiter's sidereal orbital cycle is (a bit less than) 12 years, it seems, at least to me, to be probable that the Chinese at this later time correlated "the twelve Earthly Branches" with Jupiter's "residing" in different parts of the Chinese "zodiac" (possibly from contact with astronomers from India, whose "Indian 60-year cycle", however, really follows Jupiter's "true" orbital period and therefore often only has 59 years), but this cannot be the original source for the cycle of "the twelve Earthly Branches", which existed more than 1000 years earlier. Does anyone have any information about the "true", historical source of this Chinese cycle of "the twelve Earthly Branches"? And if so, could that information (of course from a scientific, cited source) be incorporated into this Wikipedia page? /Erik Ljungstrand (Sweden) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.241.158.201 (talk) 11:50, 3 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Erik is correct. The association with Jupiter comes 1000 years after the 12-cycle is first used to count days. See Smith (2011). TheNothingNihilates (talk) 02:14, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Current usage
This whole section baffles me.
 * The terrestrial branches are still commonly used nowadays in Chinese counting systems similar to the way the alphabet is used in English. For example, names in legal documents and contracts where English speakers would use K, L, M, etc. ...

Where would English speakers use K, L, M? (Why not A, B, C?)  Is this about enumerating the clauses, or fictional names used for the parties, or what?


 * Since the celestial stems and terrestrial branches combined only consist of 22 characters, the four final letters – W, X, Y, and Z – cannot be represented by any of the celestial stems and terrestrial branches, and those four letters are represented by '物', '天', '地', and '人', respectively, instead.

Why would a Chinese contract need specifically to represent the 26 Latin letters?


 * In case of upper-case letters, the radical of '口' (the 'mouth' radical) may be added to the corresponding terrestrial branch or any of '物', '天', '地', and '人' to denote an upper-case letter.

Again, why do Latin letters need to be represented at all, let alone distinguished by case? —Tamfang (talk) 21:48, 15 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Seems like we should just cut it out entirely if it's unsourced. Remsense  诉  21:50, 15 April 2024 (UTC)