Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is an artwork by Chinese contemporary artist and political commentator, Ai Weiwei. The work comes in a small (gold) and large (bronze) version. Created in 2010, the zodiac heads (a Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig) are inspired by those which once comprised a water clock-fountain at the Old Summer Palace, which is a complex of palaces and gardens in Beijing that were constructed by the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty. The Old Summer Palace was eventually destroyed by French and British troops in
Theophoric name Theophoric name A theophoric name (from Greek: , "theophoros", literally "bearing or carrying a god") embeds the name of a god, both invoking and displaying the protection of that deity. For example, names embedding Apollo, such as "Apollonios" or "Apollodorus", existed in Greek antiquity. Theophoric personal names, containing the name of a god in whose care the individual is entrusted (or a generic word for "god"), were also exceedingly common in the ancient Near East and Mesopotamia. Some names of theophoric origin remain common today, such as Theodore ("theo-", "god"; "-dore", origin of word compound in Greek: "doron", "gift"; hence