Chinese zodiac

How the calendar decides

The Chinese calendar counts months from new moon to new moon and ties them to the Sun with twelve principal solar terms. The month that holds the winter solstice is the eleventh. Usually the new year starts with the second new moon after that solstice; in a year with thirteen months, a leap month is inserted where a month holds no principal term, and if that falls before the new year it pushes the new year one month later. Days are counted in Beijing time. This page follows those rules with the Sun and Moon worked out on your device, rather than a table of dates, and marks the years where a leap month moved the start.

Animals, stems and elements

Each year carries one of twelve earthly branches, known by their animals from the Rat to the Pig, and one of ten heavenly stems, which pair up into the five elements, wood, fire, earth, metal and water, each in a yang and a yin year. Twelve branches and ten stems come back into step every sixty years, which is the cycle drawn inside the wheel. The year of the date above sits somewhere on it, and so does the year it will next come round.

Using the page

The date box starts from the birth date saved on this device, or from today, and takes any date from 1901 to 2099. The wheel lights the animal and the year of the sixty-year cycle. Below it the page names the year with its stem and branch in Chinese characters, the days it began and ended, other years of the same animal and of the same place in the cycle, and the year we are in now, then lists when each year begins from two years before the chosen one to nine after, marking any year a leap month moved.

A worked example

Take two people born four days apart in 2000. The Chinese new year fell on 5 February that year, when the Metal Dragon began. Somebody born on 5 February 2000 is a Metal Dragon; somebody born on 1 February 2000 is still in the year that began on 16 February 1999, the Earth Rabbit. A table that simply sets 2000 against the Dragon gets the second person wrong, and the note under the wheel says so. The same happens every year to anybody born in January or early February: before the new year, the animal is the previous year’s.

Working out the element

The element follows the last digit of the Chinese year, which for anyone born before that year’s new year is the Gregorian year before. Years ending in 4 or 5 are wood, 6 or 7 fire, 8 or 9 earth, 0 or 1 metal and 2 or 3 water; even years are yang and odd years yin. The animal comes back every twelve years and the stem, which carries the element and its yin or yang, every ten, so the same pair returns every sixty: 1984, a Wood Rat, began the cycle that ends with 2043, and 2000 was a Metal Dragon, as 1940 was.

Common confusions

The lunar new year is not the only start of the year in Chinese tradition. The Four Pillars method changes the year at lichun, the start of spring, when the Sun reaches 315° of longitude around 4 February, so for someone born between the two dates the animal can differ; this page follows the new moon. The English names vary too: the Goat is also called the Sheep or the Ram, and in the Vietnamese zodiac the Cat takes the Rabbit’s place. Nor is the animal related to a Western sun sign, which follows the Sun through the twelve signs within every year. The new moons the calendar counts from are listed on the moon calendar, and the winter solstice that fixes the eleventh month on the year.

What it claims

The animals and elements are a way of naming years that has lasted more than two thousand years, and a vocabulary many people use about character. The page works out the name of a year correctly and leaves the reading of it to the tradition; it predicts nothing. For other old ways of naming a date, see numbers and the Maya Tzolk’in.