The Chinese Zodiac
Twelve animals, five elements, and one boundary nearly everyone places on the wrong day. Find your true sign with the exact start-of-spring instant applied, not a calendar-year guess.
What is my sign?
Enter your date of birth. If it falls on a boundary day, the exact hour decides, and we will ask for it.
Boundary instants from the Lichun table · runs in your browser
Twelve animals, sixty years
Each animal returns every twelve years and carries a different element each time, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, or Water, so the full cycle takes sixty years to repeat. The years below follow the solar boundary; a January or early February birth may belong to the animal before.
Next: the year of the Fire Goat 丁未
The Fire Horse year now running gives way to the Fire Goat. The Goat enters its own year, the Ox meets the clash, the Rat the harm, and the Dog the punishment. What that means depends on your full chart, not the animal alone.
Why the placemat is sometimes wrong
The zodiac year does not begin on 1 January, and in the reckoning used by Bazi it does not begin at Lunar New Year either. It begins at Lichun, the solar term that opens spring, around 4 February. The lunar festival drifts between 21 January and 20 February, so the two boundaries disagree in 117 of the 121 years from 1924 to 2044.
A birth between the two dates has one animal by each system. In 1983, Lichun fell on 4 February and Lunar New Year on 13 February: anyone born in that window is a Pig in a Bazi chart and a Dog on the placemat. Only the solar boundary stays consistent with the Day Master, the month pillar, and the luck cycles of a full chart.
Your animal is one of eight characters
The year animal is real, and it is the character you share with everyone born the same year. A Bazi chart reads all eight: the stems and branches of your year, month, day, and hour. The one that describes you personally is the Day Master, drawn from the day you were born.
Day Master, hidden stems, ten gods, luck pillars, and the full professional table. The deep reading is optional.
Frequently asked
What is my Chinese zodiac sign?
Your sign is the animal of your birth year, but the year does not begin on 1 January. In the solar reckoning used by Bazi and classical Chinese astrology, the year turns at Lichun, the start of spring, around 4 February. In the popular lunar reckoning it turns at Lunar New Year, which moves between 21 January and 20 February. The checker on this page applies the exact boundary instants, so a birthday in that window gets the correct animal rather than a guess.
Why might my zodiac animal be different from what I was told?
Because the two calendars disagree in 117 of the 121 years from 1924 to 2044. Anyone born between Lichun and Lunar New Year has one animal by the solar boundary and another by the lunar one. Restaurant placemats and most websites use the lunar date; a Bazi chart uses Lichun. Both traditions are real, but only the solar boundary stays consistent with the rest of a Four Pillars chart.
What Chinese zodiac year is 2027?
2027 is the year of the Fire Goat, written 丁未. It begins at Lichun on 4 February 2027 at 09:46 China time by the solar reckoning, and at Lunar New Year on 6 February 2027 by the lunar one. A birth on 4 or 5 February 2027 is already a Goat in a Bazi chart while the lunar calendar still says Horse.
Is 2027 the year of the Goat, Sheep, or Ram?
All three names translate the same branch, 未, whose animal is 羊. Chinese does not distinguish goat from sheep here, so English sources vary. Goat is the most common rendering in astrology. You will also see Red Goat and Fire Sheep for 2027; the colour red and the element fire both describe the 丁 stem, so these are the same year under different names.
What are the five elements of the zodiac?
Each year carries one of five elements alongside its animal: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, or Water, in a cycle that repeats every ten years. Combined with the twelve animals this gives the sixty-year cycle, so a Metal Horse year such as 1990 returns only every six decades. The element colours the animal: a Fire Goat reads differently from a Water Goat.
Is the Chinese zodiac the same as Bazi?
The zodiac animal is one part of Bazi. A Four Pillars chart encodes the year, month, day, and hour of birth as eight characters, and the year animal is a single one of the eight, the one you share with everyone born the same year. The character that describes you personally is the Day Master, drawn from the day of birth. That is why two people of the same animal can be entirely different charts.
Which animals should read the 2027 forecast most closely?
The Goat stands in its own year, called Ben Ming Nian, traditionally a year to steady rather than to gamble. The Ox faces the direct clash with the year branch, the Rat the harm relation, and the Dog the punishment. The Horse, Pig, Rabbit, and Snake stand in harmony or combination with the Goat year. Classical practice reads all of this against the full chart rather than the animal alone.