Is  the character 年 (or its etymology) related to the mythical beast in Chinese mythology? Premise: According to the mythology related to the Chinese New Year, a creature called 年 (also referred to as 年兽 — pinyin: nián shòu — 年獸 in Traditional chinese) was a mythical beast that "lived under the sea and in the mountains". 

This beast used to come out once a year to attack people and eat them, although — always according to the mythology — it preferred children. Eventually the villagers understood that this beast hated loud noise and feared the color red (it seems this is the origin of the known red chinese lanterns), because it escaped when it saw a child wearing red.

Here comes my question: Although the story is interesting, I'd like you to focus on the language part of this question. I noticed fairly quickly the relation between the name of this beast, 年 which means (year) and the fact that it attacked once a year, during the spring, so around the Chinese New Year celebration.

Maybe it's a coincidence or maybe I'm just reading it wrong, but is this the origin of the term year or is it rather the opposite, i.e. the beast was given this name because it used to appear once a year?

In other words, is the character etymology related to this fact? If so, in what measure and what manner?
I think it's just a folklore, because every time I read this story, I can't find the source of the floklore cited there. I never treat this stroy seriously.

The oracle form of the character "年" is:(note: one oracle character may have different but similar shapes, because characters were not standardized at all in that times)


The upper part looks like a bundle of grain, and the lower parts look like a man. This shape depicts a man with a bundle of grain on his back. It origninally means "the grains are ripe and human being need it".Because the grain plants were ripe once per year(in ancient times, argricultural tech was very low), the meaning of "year" derived.

Below is the different shapes of "年" in different times,showing its evolution. The picture comes from a great online dictinary "汉典",however, it's only in Chinese. From left to right, the shape was used in "甲骨文(oracle,which is the oldest as far as we know)","金文(popular in 商and 周 dynasty, carved on bronze castings)","小篆(a standardized font, used in 秦 dynasty)",“楷体(the modern Kai font)". You can see that 
in 金文, the lower part became "千" and in 小篆, the shape was similar with the original 秊.