Etymology: Yang – “goat,” “sheep,” “sun” or “Aspen”, Jing – “essence” or “clean”

Here’s another entity that caught my interest. Once I sat down to try and find more on them, I found the information to be rather sparse.

Per the few sources I can find, Yang Jing is a Chinese Goat God who is often described as wearing a goatskin and a goat’s head like a hood. He may have been viewed as a fertility god possessing a great sexual potency.

The local villagers in the mountainous areas would offer up sacrifices to Yang Jing to gain his protection of themselves, their harvest and livestock from wild animals.

That would have been it, except I found a couple other tidbits of interest in connection to the name Yang Jing that very likely cast some doubt to the authenticity of a Chinese Goat God.

Chinese Medicine

Horny Goat Weed

Also, known as Epimedium, I found the name Yang Jing in connection to this herb for an herbal tonic used for restoring a person’s overall energy and for men. An alternative to using Viagra!

Any herb used for restoring male sexual energy is referred to as a Yang Jing herb.

Chinese Surname

The name Yang is the sixth most popular surname found in Mainland China. There’s a number origins for the Yang clan in China. The first family this name are the descendants of Huang Di during the Xia Dynasty. More families and Emperors from the Zhou, Song, Sui, Ji and Tang dynasties have all claimed or changed names to the Yang surname. Often this seems an effort to lay claim to the dynasty aristocracies.