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Chinese zodiac calculator
Your Chinese zodiac animal is the animal of your Chinese year, which does not begin on 1 January. Chinese astrology (BaZi) starts the year at Li Chun, the start of spring, on 3, 4 or 5 February; anyone born in January or early February belongs to the previous year’s animal.
How it is calculated
- If you were born before 4 February, count your birth year as the year before.
- The animal repeats every 12 years: 2020 was the Rat, 2021 the Ox, and so on through the Pig.
- The element follows the year’s last digit: 0–1 Metal, 2–3 Water, 4–5 Wood, 6–7 Fire, 8–9 Earth.
- Even years are yang, odd years yin. So 2026 is the yang Fire Horse.
Popular horoscopes often turn the year at Chinese New Year, which moves between 21 January and 20 February. BaZi — the Four Pillars, which is how Plutto reads a Chinese chart — uses Li Chun, a fixed point in the solar year. The two agree for everyone born outside that window.
Questions
Why does my animal differ from a website that uses only the year?
The Chinese year does not start on 1 January. If you were born in January or early February, your animal is the previous year’s. BaZi turns the year at Li Chun (3–5 February); popular calendars at the lunar new year.
What if I was born on 3, 4 or 5 February?
Li Chun falls on one of those days at a specific minute that changes each year — the moment the Sun reaches 315° of ecliptic longitude. Add your birth time and time zone and the calculator computes that moment for your year and tells you which side of it you were born on.
What does the element add?
Each animal year also carries one of the five elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water — so the full cycle is 60 years. A Fire Horse and a Water Horse are read differently.
Is the year animal my whole Chinese chart?
No. It is one of four pillars — year, month, day and hour. BaZi reads the day pillar as the self; the year is the outermost layer, family and generation.
In Plutto
A calculator gives one number. Plutto reads your whole chart — numerology beside Vedic, Western and Chinese astrology — and lets you ask it about the result, out loud. Background: the guide.
Ask it something you actually want to know.