HesapHanem

Zodiac Sign Calculator (Western + Chinese)

What is my zodiac sign?

Result

Cancer
Horse

How it is calculated

The Western sign comes from fixed calendar dates. Each month has a cut-off day: the sign of the previous month ends before that day and the next sign begins on it. The cut-offs used are January 20, February 19, March 21, April 20, May 21, June 21, July 23, August 23, September 23, October 23, November 22 and December 22. The Chinese animal follows a 12-year cycle that turns at Chinese New Year, not on 1 January. The tool looks up that year's New Year in a bundled table of dates for 1900 to 2100 (from the Hong Kong Observatory's Gregorian-lunar conversion tables); a birth date before it counts as the previous year. Then animal year mod 12 picks the animal, starting with monkey for remainder 0. Outside 1900 to 2100 the animal is shown as a dash, because there is no table. Cusp dates can differ by a day between sources.

Worked example

Birth date 1990-07-15. For month 7 the cut-off is the 23rd, and 15 is before it, so the sign is the one that began in June: Cancer. Chinese New Year 1990 fell on 27 January and 15 July is after it, so the animal year is 1990: 1990 mod 12 = 10, which maps to Horse. The tool therefore reports Cancer and Horse. A birth on 1990-01-15 is before that New Year, so it counts as 1989 (1989 mod 12 = 9): Snake.

Try this example →

Common mistakes

  • Treating a cusp date as certain: on the boundary days the sign depends on the exact time and year, and sources differ by a day.
  • Expecting the animal to change on 1 January: it changes on Chinese New Year, which falls between 21 January and 20 February, so a January birth usually belongs to the previous animal.
  • Entering the date in day-month-year order; the field needs a valid year-month-day date.
  • Confusing the tropical (Western) sign with the sidereal one used in Vedic astrology, which is shifted by about a month.
  • Using the year of an event instead of the birth year for the animal.

Sources

About this calculator

This calculator takes a birth date and returns two different traditions at once: the Western (tropical) zodiac sign, read from the calendar date ranges the twelve signs occupy — the tropical zodiac divides the year into twelve equal segments, which no longer line up with the constellations they are named after, and the Chinese zodiac animal, based on a 12-year lunar calendar cycle that assigns each year an animal like Dragon, Tiger or Rabbit.

It is used casually by anyone curious about horoscopes, compatibility readings or personality traits associated with their sign, and around Lunar New Year by people checking which animal a given year carries. The animal follows the real Chinese New Year of the birth year (which falls between 21 January and 20 February), so someone born in January or early February still gets the previous year's animal. Chinese animal years are covered for birth dates from 1900 to 2100.

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Comments (1)

  • Editorial team

    The Chinese animal here follows the Gregorian year, so it is wrong for anyone born in January or early February, before that year's Lunar New Year. For 15 January 2000 the tool says Dragon, but the Lunar New Year fell on 5 February, so by the traditional calendar that person is a Rabbit. The Western sign uses fixed day cut-offs, so on a cusp date the birth hour can matter. Born in January or February? Post the date and the sign you expected.

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