Origin

The character 午 is a picture of a horse's body and legs drawn with simple vertical and horizontal strokes. Over time, this pictograph became stylized into the four straight lines you see today, losing its obvious resemblance to the animal. Because horses were important in early Chinese society, the character naturally came to mean "horse" in Japanese. It also became associated with noon and the seventh position in the Chinese zodiac's twelve-year cycle, where each animal sign corresponds to certain hours and years.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.