What's your Chinese zodiac animal?

The twelve animals and their years

Each animal comes around every twelve years. A year starts at Lì Chūn (立春), around February 4: born before it, you belong to the year before. Each animal's page gives the exact dates.

When does the zodiac year start?

Two counts are in use. BaZi, the Chinese birth chart, starts the year at Lì Chūn (立春), the Start of Spring: one moment worldwide, when the sun reaches 315 degrees along its yearly path, on February 3, 4 or 5. Many zodiac calendars start it at Lunar New Year instead, a calendar date that moves between January 21 and February 20.

Take a made-up birth on February 1, 1990. Lunar New Year had come on January 27, 1990, so many zodiac calendars call that baby a Horse. Lì Chūn came at 10:13 am on February 4, 1990, Beijing time, so in BaZi the year was still 己巳, the Earth Snake.

Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942. Neither Lì Chūn (February 4, 1942) nor Lunar New Year (February 15, 1942) had come, so he was a Snake (辛巳) by both counts, not a Horse.

This site counts from Lì Chūn, as BaZi does. When the two counts differ, the finder names both.

You're more than your animal

Your animal is the earthly branch of your birth year: one of the eight characters (八字, BaZi) a Chinese birth chart reads from your year, month, day and hour of birth. BaZi reads the character of the day you were born as you, your nature type, and the finder above shows it from the same date.

The ten nature types ›Get the full chart ›

Where the twelve animals come from

Qin bamboo slips found in 1975 at Shuihudi, Yunmeng, Hubei, include a Day Book (日书) whose thieves entry (盗者) pairs the earthly branches with animals; in one scholar's reading of the list, Wu is a deer and Wei a horse, unlike today's order, and the pairings mark days, not years.

In Wang Chong's Lunheng, the Wushi chapter (物势篇) pairs Wu with the Horse, Zi with the Rat, You with the Rooster and Mao with the Rabbit, and the Yandu chapter (言毒篇) pairs Chen with the Dragon and Si with the Snake. A 2025 article on China's intangible cultural heritage site says it cannot be determined whether these animals were tied to a person's year of birth.

The great race is a folk tale told in several versions, and a university museum calls it only a story; the Victoria and Albert Museum traces the custom of pairing animals with years in a 12-year cycle back to at least the Han dynasty.

Sources: China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network, Chinese Wikisource (Lunheng, Wushi chapter), Chinese Wikisource (Lunheng, Yandu chapter), Lam Museum of Anthropology, Wake Forest University, Spurlock Museum of World Cultures, University of Illinois, China Culture, MiraCosta College Library, Victoria and Albert Museum

Questions people ask

Is the Chinese zodiac the same as BaZi?

No. Your zodiac animal is one character of a BaZi chart, the earthly branch of your birth year. BaZi reads all eight characters of a birth date, and reads the day's as you.

Why do some sites give me a different animal?

Many start the year at Lunar New Year, and some on January 1. BaZi starts it at Lì Chūn. For a birth in January or early February the answers can differ, and the finder names both counts.

Goat, sheep or ram?

All three. Chinese uses one character, 羊, for these horned animals, and English has to pick; this site says Goat. Year of the Goat 2027 ›

What's my element?

Your answer above gives your birth year's element. BaZi's own answer is the element of the day you were born. What element am I? ›

Do the animals say anything about my future?

This site doesn't predict. It gives the calendar exactly, and what the tradition says about each animal, as tradition.