What element am I?

Three answers to one question

Ask “what element am I?” and you can get three different answers, each from a different rule. For nearly half of all births the three are three different elements, so it helps to know which one you're looking at.

1. Your Day Master's element

This is the BaZi answer. Your Day Master is the heavenly stem of your day pillar, one of ten: each of the five elements in a yang and a yin form. BaZi reads it as you, and reads every other character in the chart by how it relates to it. Finding it takes only your birth date, unless you were born late at night.

The ten Day Masters

2. Your birth year's element

This is the zodiac answer: the Metal in “Metal Horse”. It is the element of your year's heavenly stem, and the year's last digit gives it: 0 and 1 are Metal, 2 and 3 Water, 4 and 5 Wood, 6 and 7 Fire, 8 and 9 Earth. BaZi reads the year pillar as your roots and early years rather than as you. Most zodiac sites also start the year at Chinese New Year; BaZi starts it at 立春 (Lìchūn), as the next section explains.

3. Your year's Na Yin

In Chinese, “what element am I?” (五行属什么) often means the Na Yin (纳音), a second element attached to each of the sixty stem-and-branch pairs. Each Na Yin covers two years in a row: 1984 and 1985 are Gold in the Sea (海中金), so people born in them are called “Metal”. The Na Yin follows its own table, so it often differs from the other two.

Na Yin, explained

One person, three elements

The site's example chart is a made-up birth: May 24, 1984, 8 pm, Shanghai. Its Day Master is 戊, Yang Earth, the Mountain. Its year is 甲子, a Wood Rat year. That year's Na Yin is Gold in the Sea, which is Metal. Earth, Wood and Metal: three answers for one person. BaZi reads the first as the person; the other two describe the year.

Open the example chart

Why the BaZi year starts in February

The BaZi year begins at 立春, the Start of Spring, when the sun reaches 315 degrees along its yearly path. That falls on February 3, 4 or 5. Chinese New Year follows the moon instead and moves between January 21 and February 20. For a birth between the two dates, a zodiac site and a BaZi chart give different years.

Take a made-up birth on February 1, 1990. Chinese New Year had come on January 27, so most zodiac sites call that baby a Metal Horse. 立春 came on February 4, at 10:13 am Beijing time, so in BaZi the year pillar is still 己巳, the Earth Snake. Born on the day of 立春 itself? Then the hour decides, and the table below gives each year's moment.

Why a late-night birth can change the answer

BaZi starts a new day at 11 pm, not at midnight, and it counts by the sun at your birthplace rather than by the clock. Depending on where you were born and on daylight saving, that moment falls between about 10 pm and 3 am clock time: near 11 pm in Shanghai, after 1 am in Madrid in summer, about 2 am in Kashgar. A birth in that window can take the next day's Day Master or the one before, so the finder shows both, and the full calculator settles it from your time and place.

Some schools change the day at midnight instead. Methodology sets out the rule this site uses and where others differ.

One element, or five?

Your Day Master's element is a starting point, not the whole chart. Every chart holds several elements in different amounts, and BaZi reads how they balance around the Day Master: which help it, which drain it, and what the season adds. The five-element check counts them for your birth, and the full chart weighs them.

Year elements, 1930 to 2030

Each BaZi year starts at 立春. The table gives that moment in Beijing time, the year pillar, its element and animal, and its Na Yin. A birth before the 立春 time belongs to the year above.