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Chinese Zodiac Calculator
Enter any birth date — Gregorian or Chinese lunar — and read the lunar year it belongs to: its zodiac animal, heavenly stem 天干, earthly branch 地支, five-element sign 五行 and 干支 label, plus the exact date of that year's Chinese New Year and when your next 本命年 begins.
Find your zodiac sign
Pick the system your date is written in, then enter it — everything updates as you change a field.
How this calculator works
Four steps, all of them in your browser tab.
Say whether your date is Gregorian 公历 or already lunar 农历, then pick it — a date picker or year / month / day selects with a leap-month 闰月 toggle.
The built-in lunar table for 1900-2100 finds the lunar year your date falls into. Dates before Chinese New Year belong to the previous animal, and the table knows exactly where that boundary sits.
The year gives all four readings at once: the animal 生肖, the earthly branch 地支, the heavenly stem 天干 and its five-element sign 五行 with its Yang or Yin polarity.
Because the animal repeats every 12 years, the tool returns the next same-animal year, the exact Gregorian date of its Chinese New Year and the age you reach in it.
What you get
Stem + branch together, e.g. 丙午年 — the everyday way a Chinese year is named.
Wood 木, Fire 火, Earth 土, Metal 金 or Water 水, plus Yang 阳 / Yin 阴 from the stem.
The Gregorian date the lunar year began — the boundary that decides your animal.
Your next same-animal year, its start date and how old you turn — the year traditionally met with red.
Your birth date written as lunar month + day in Chinese and English, leap months included.
No accounts, no API calls, no tracking — the maths runs from a table inside the page.
FAQ
What is my Chinese zodiac if I was born in January?
Chinese New Year falls between Jan 21 and Feb 21, so a January or early-February birthday usually belongs to the previous lunar year — and the previous animal. The calculator applies that boundary for you; Jan 1, 2025, for example, is still a Dragon, not a Snake.
What does 本命年 (běnmìngnián) mean?
It is the year whose zodiac animal matches your birth year, returning every 12 years — 2026 for anyone born in a Horse year, then 2038, 2050 and so on. It is traditionally considered a year of extra caution, met by wearing red.
Why is 2026 the year of the Fire Horse?
Two cycles run together: 12 earthly branches 地支 giving the animal (Horse 午) and 10 heavenly stems 天干 giving the element (丙 = Yang Fire). Combined they form the 干支 label 丙午 and the sign Fire Horse.
How accurate is the lunar conversion?
The page carries the standard lunar table for 1900-2100, including every leap month and 29- or 30-day month, and is self-checked against known Chinese New Year dates. Regional calendars can differ by a day in rare edge years, so treat a single-day discrepancy as calendar-society variance rather than a bug.
What is the difference between the animal and the element?
The animal repeats every 12 years, the element every 10, so the pair only repeats every 60 years. Someone can be a Wood Dragon, a Fire Dragon or a Water Dragon depending on the year.
Is my birth date sent anywhere?
No. The tool makes zero network requests: the table, the conversion and the rendering all happen in your browser, so the page works offline once loaded.