What is my Chinese zodiac animal? Find it from your full birth date

How to use the Chinese zodiac finder

1. Enter your full Date of birth: day, month and year all matter.
2. Read your Animal, then the Element (for example “Metal Horse”) and whether the year is Yin or yang.
3. Stem and branch gives the traditional name of the year in pinyin and Chinese characters.
4. That lunar year shows the exact dates your zodiac year ran from and to.
5. Below are Traditional associations and a list of other years of your animal. If you were born in January or February, a note shows when that year’s New Year fell.

What it does and when to use it

The Chinese zodiac is part of Lunar New Year celebrations in China and many other countries, and people often ask each other’s animal at family gatherings. This tool is for those cultural and fun uses.

It matters most for anyone born in January or February, because many simple charts switch animals on 1 January and give the wrong answer. For other birthday lookups, try the Western zodiac sign finder, the generation finder or the half birthday calculator.

How it works

The tool holds the date of Chinese New Year for every year from 1900 to 2101. These dates were taken from Mark Swofford’s published tables and checked against the ICU Chinese calendar data used by browsers and Node.js. Where the two disagreed (1954, 2027 and 2030) the published dates are used.

If your birthday is before that year’s New Year, you belong to the previous lunar year. The lunar year then gives a place in the 60-year cycle, counted from 1984, a Wood Rat year that begins a cycle. The animal repeats every 12 years and the heavenly stem every 10. Each element covers two stems in a row, one yang and one yin.

Worked examples

10 February 1985. Chinese New Year 1985 was on 20 February, so this birthday falls in the lunar year that began in 1984: Rat, Wood, Yang. The result shows That lunar year: 2 February 1984 to 19 February 1985.

6 February 2027. This is the day Chinese New Year 2027 begins, so the person is a Goat, element Fire, Yin, with Stem and branch: Ding 丁 Wei 未. Other Goat years listed include 1991, 2003 and 2015.

15 January 1900. Too early for the table, so the tool replies that it covers dates from 31 January 1900 to 28 January 2101.

Limits and tips

• The tool compares calendar dates only. Chinese New Year follows Beijing time, so for a birth abroad on New Year’s Day itself, check the local time difference.
• Some traditions, such as certain forms of Chinese astrology, start the animal year at Lichun, the start of spring, around 4 February. This tool uses Chinese New Year.