牡牛座 – Taurus: The Western Zodiac in Japanese

The second astrological sign of the Zodiac is Taurus. This is the sign for people’s birthdays between around April 20 to May 20. So, what is this sign called in Japanese? Let’s take a look.

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What is Taurus in Japanese?

The word for Taurus in Japanese is 牡牛座おうしざ. We can split this word into 牡牛おうし and 座ざ. First, 座 is a suffix added after the names of words in the zodiac or after constellations. 牡牛 means cow or bull. If we want to break down 牡牛 even more, 牡 is a special character meaning male and 牛 means sheep. In everyday Japanese 雄お is the commonly used Kanji in place of 牡. Also, in Japanese when talking about bulls or cows you would only usually say 牛. This word is gender-neutral unlike in English where bull is male and cow is female.

牡羊座 – Aries: The Western Zodiac in Japanese

Another word for Taurus in Japanese is 金牛宮きんぎゅうきゅう. This is the more formal name for Aries but 牡牛座 is the word that is used commonly. The word 金 means gold, so if you want to translate 金牛 then it would mean gold-cow or gold-bull.

Resources

• 金牛宮 – Wikipedia (Japanese)