Turtle this and snake that

[Guest post by Frank Chance in response to my latest post.  Gives me hebi-jebies.]

Reading  your recent Language Log post on turtles (mostly about Kucha) on New Year’s Day made me wonder whether there should be a Language Log post on snakes.  There are two very different characters used for snake in Japanese – 巳 mi, used almost exclusively for the zodiac sign and in counting (it is a homonym for three ), and　蛇  hebi., also read as ja, particularly in such compounds as 大蛇 daja, also read as Orochi.  That name is known to giant monster fans from 八岐大蛇  Yamata no Orochi, the eight-forked (and hence eight-headed) great snake mentioned in Nihonshoki, the oldest Japanese history text.  Tea aficionados and dance fans know it from a type of umbrella with a red dot where the spines meet, called a 蛇の目傘 janome-gasa or snake-eyed parasol. Janome was in turn a corporate name for a maker of sewing machines.

How is it that the zodiac characters are different from the characters in ordinary use for the animals represented? 

巳 is also a lot like 乙, the second character in the counting sequence 甲乙丙丁 / こうおつへいてい kō otsu hei tei.

And, of course, the counting sequence is the ten stems that go with the twelve animals.

巳 mi is us used for a special zodiacal character that looks like a snake emoji, but is not available in regular fonts.

Cf. 乙己巳 on Baidu.

I have no idea what to do with the monster in the anime series BLEACH: 

已己巳己巴（いこみきどもえ）

 

Selected readings

• "Turtle this" (1/1/25)
• "Snakes in the grass, probably" (6/19/19)
• "Chinese characters and eyesight" (11/12/14)