There's some confusion as to whether this Chinese New Year is the Year of the Goat, Sheep, or Ram.
There is some cultural variation which might contribute to the confusion:
In Vietnamese, the sign is mui, which is unambiguously goat.[7] In Japan, on the other hand, the sign is hitsuji, sheep;[7] while in Korea[8] and Mongolia the sign is also sheep or ram. Within China, there may be a regional distinction with the zodiacal yáng more likely to be thought of as a goat in the south, while tending to be thought of as a sheep in the north.[9]
According to a scholar cited on SCMP.com, Goat is likely more accurate for Chinese New Year:
The Chinese word yang in oracle-bone script – the ancient characters found on bones used for divination in the Bronze Age – looked like an animal with two horns and a pointy face, said Professor Ho Che-wah, head of the department of Chinese literature at Chinese University.
But the character could be translated to goat, sheep or ram in English.
Ho said that while sheep had a long history in Chinese society, the country's culinary past suggested the goat as the most likely animal to have been included in the zodiac.
In modern Chinese, the two-horned word in question is 羊 (yáng), which Wiktionary translates as "caprid, eg. sheep, goat, antelope". (My scientifically-minded friend Roger calls this year the Year of the Caprid.) As of this writing, an image search for "羊年" (yáng nián, "year of the 羊") returns mostly goat- and antelope-like depictions of the animal. Here are the first two search results:
Based on all the above, I would go with "Year of the Goat", but I don't feel strongly enough to get religious about it.
The SCMP article mentions that the Hong Kong Tourism Board is thinking "outside the box" and going with Sheep-of-non-specific-gender:
[O]ne character appears to be male with blue wool and the other is female with pink wool, a dress and heels, meaning it could also be the Year of the Ram or Year of the Ewe.
We could think even further out of the box and leave this planet altogether. How about Year of the Tauntaun?
