Opinion | Why is Harry Potter enemy Draco Malfoy trending ahead of the Year of the Horse?
Draco Malfoy’s Chinese name reflects how the character for ‘horse’ influences China’s language, culture, greetings, translations and more
The coming arrival of the Year of the Horse has seen equine imagery and language emerging hot out of the gate.
Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour fireworks display is themed “Prosperity Gallops Across Hong Kong”; similarly, at the Jockey Club’s Year of the Horse Race Day at Sha Tin, you will “Gallop into Good Fortune”.
Writers have trotted out lists of idioms related to horses in Chinese and English, and auspicious greetings using the character 馬 for “horse” – pronounced máh in Cantonese, mǎ in Mandarin – and phrases formed with the character. A popular phrase is 馬上發財 mǎ shàng fā cái (in Mandarin) – playing on the phrase 馬上 mǎshàng meaning “immediately” – to wish instant wealth.
Meanwhile, English puns include wishing “a stable year ahead” or “neigh-bourly wishes for joy”. Multilingual punning also abounds in wishes like “ma-vellous new year”, code-mixing Mandarin mǎ ‘horse’ with English, and “neigh hóu maa” for Cantonese “how are you”, with Cantonese néih or “you” substituted with a horse’s neigh.
In academic scholarship, the Chinese word for “horse” is widely used as an example in linguistics and Sinology.