羊
yáng · HSK 3
sheep
🐑 Pictograph of a sheep's head — horns on top, body below.
羊 (yáng) means sheep or goat. The character is one of the oldest pictographs: the two strokes on top are the curved horns, and the lines below are the face and body. It appears as a radical in 美 (beautiful) and 群 (flock).
羊 — pictograph of a sheep's head with horns
羊 is a pictograph showing a sheep viewed from the front, with the top strokes representing curved horns above the face. In ancient China sheep symbolized goodness and auspiciousness, so 羊 became a common semantic component in characters like 美 (beautiful) and 善 (good).