The Year of the Dog (inu doshi) is rapidly approaching. You'll often see these …

The Year of the Dog (inu doshi) is rapidly approaching. You’ll often see these two kanji to represent the new year:

犬 - pronounced “inu” or “ken”. This is the most common for actual physical barkey-lickey-take-me-for-a-walk kind of dogs; those who keep dogs will often have a government-issued sticker above their door with this kanji. One theory of its usage is that it’s onomatopoeic - that the “ken, ken!” sound dogs make resulted in its adoption. It can be used to represent the zodiac year, but the kanji below is more common.

戌 - this kanji is used for both the Asian zodiac and the 9th month of the lunar calendar (October/November in the Gregorian). Apparently, the kanji is a conflation of two axes (“ono”, 斧); how it came to mean “dog” is unclear, but perhaps the brush clearing requiring axes conducted in autumn was equated with canines (I’m sure they enjoyed it).

Note: A third kanji, 狗, is on occasion seen. It is the most common Chinese kanji for dog. That the two languages did not settle on a single character for such an indispensable animal (as they did for others such as cow 牛, horse 馬, chicken 鶏, fish 魚, etc.) is interesting. - William