Chinese zodiac calculator: find your animal sign AND element from your birth year, with traits, lucky numbers, and compatibility. Free, instant, private.
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Calculation details
Every figure above is calculated locally in your browser from the assumptions shown. No inputs are sent anywhere. See the methodology section below for how this tool works.
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Born June 15, 1995 and the sign is the Pig, the last animal of the 12-year cycle. Because the zodiac year starts at Chinese New Year, January and early February birthdays often belong to the previous animal. Enter any birthdate in the BoringToolsKit Chinese zodiac calculator.
The 12 animals repeat in a fixed order: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig. (Source: BoringToolsKit calculation methodology)
Chinese New Year falls between January 21 and February 20, so the zodiac year never matches January 1. (Source: BoringToolsKit calculation methodology)
1995, 2007, and 2019 are all Pig years: the cycle repeats every 12 years. (Source: BoringToolsKit calculation methodology)
June 15, 1995: the Year of the Pig.Lunar new year dates stored for all 199 supported years, 1900 to 2098.
Transparent methodology
How this calculator works
Formula
Zodiac sign = the animal whose 12-year cycle contains the birth year; the cycle anchors to Chinese New Year, not January 1.
Worked example
June 15, 1995 falls in the Year of the Pig (1995), so that birthdate is a Pig.
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Worked example: 15 May 1990
Input: year 1990, month 5, day 15. The tool first checks the lunar new year table at position (1990 minus 1900) times 4, which is character offset 360. That year's entry is 0127, so lunar new year fell on 27 January 1990. May 15 comes after 27 January, so the sign belongs to zodiac year 1990, not an earlier one.
Animal: ((1990 minus 2024) mod 12 plus 12) mod 12 gives ((-34) mod 12 plus 12) mod 12 = 10, and position 10 in the animal array is Horse. Element: (1990 mod 10) is 0, shifted to 10, floor(10/2) = 5 maps to the last element, Metal. Result: Metal Horse. Its trine partners are Tiger and Dog; folk tradition assigns lucky numbers 2, 3, 7 and colors yellow and green.
Same year, different answer: someone born 20 January 1990 is 7 days before lunar new year (27 January), so the calculator uses zodiac year 1989 and returns Earth Snake instead. Two people born the same calendar year, 3 weeks apart, carry different signs, which is exactly the error the table exists to catch.
Where the simple year rule breaks
Most Chinese zodiac charts online map a sign straight to a Gregorian year, for example '1990 = Horse'. That is wrong for roughly everyone born in January and part of February: lunar new year lands between 21 January and 20 February in every year this tool covers, so 3 to 8 percent of each year's births (about 1 in 15 people) would be assigned the wrong animal by a naive year lookup. The table the tool uses stores a month and day for all 199 supported years, 1900 through 2098.
Three honest edge cases. First, year 2099 and later are rejected even though lunar tables exist further out, because the encoded table stops at 2098. Second, the tool does not validate day against month length, so 31 February passes and gets a sign; the lunar new year comparison is unaffected because month 2 day 31 is always after or before the boundary unambiguously. Third, a birthdate exactly on lunar new year counts as the new sign, since the comparison uses greater than or equal. People born on the boundary day, roughly 1 in 2,000 births, land on the sign flip and should confirm with the exact local date if records are ambiguous.
