What is my Chinese zodiac sign? A birth-year chart for 1930–2031

By ZODIAC AMULET · October 9, 2026

Short answer: your animal is set by the lunar year you were born in, and that year begins on Lunar New Year — not on 1 January. Look up your birth year in the chart below, then compare your date of birth with the Lunar New Year date beside it. Born on or after that date, you carry that year’s animal. Born before it, you carry the previous year’s.

That single rule is the whole method. It is also the thing most online “what’s my sign” year lists get wrong, because a list can only show one animal per calendar year — and for anyone born in the first weeks of a year, that is not enough to go on.

Why the year starts in late January or February

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar: months follow the moon, and the year is kept in step with the sun. So the first day of the year moves around. It always falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice, which puts Lunar New Year somewhere between 21 January and 20 February.

That is a six-week window, and it is why “I was born in 1989, so I’m a Snake” is a reasonable guess that is sometimes wrong. For most of the year it is right. For people born in January and the first half of February, it depends on the exact date.

The zodiac animals themselves run in a fixed twelve-year order — Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig — starting again at Rat. Alongside the animals, each year also carries one of the ten heavenly stems, which is where the “Metal Horse”, “Fire Horse” naming you may have seen comes from. Two full cycles of twelve and ten take sixty years to line up again, which is why the old Chinese way of stating an age was in cycles of sixty rather than in plain numbers.

The one check that decides it

Put your date of birth next to the Lunar New Year date for your birth year.

• Birthday on or after Lunar New Year → you are that year’s animal.
• Birthday before Lunar New Year → you are the previous year’s animal.

That is all. The chart below gives you both numbers in one place.

The chart: Lunar New Year dates and zodiac animals, 1930–2031

The middle column is day one of the lunar year, in the Chinese (UTC+8) calendar. Find your birth year in the first column, then read across.

Worked examples

Three cases, so you can see the rule do its work.

1. 20 February 1991. Lunar New Year 1991 fell on 15 February. The birthday is after it, so this is the Year of the Goat, and the animal is Goat.

2. 14 January 1991. Same birth year, but the birthday comes before 15 February — so the lunar year had not turned, and this person belongs to 1990, the Year of the Horse. The animal is Horse, not Goat.

3. 4 February 1962. Lunar New Year 1962 fell on 5 February. One day early is still early: this person belongs to 1961, the Year of the Ox. The animal is Ox.

The third example is the one worth remembering. A gap of a single day flips the answer, and no calendar-year list can show that.

Two things the chart cannot tell you

Time zone. The dates above are the standard Chinese (UTC+8) dates. Lunar New Year is a single instant — the new moon — and an instant lands on different calendar days in different parts of the world. Depending on where you were born and how the local calendar was kept, the boundary can shift by a day. If your birthday sits within a day or two of the date in the chart, that is the honest caveat: the answer is probably the one the chart gives, and the exact answer depends on which calendar your birth place used.

Which calendar your family used. Chinese communities outside mainland China — in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Korea and elsewhere — have kept their own offshoots of the calendar, and their new-year dates usually agree but occasionally differ by a day. If your family marked your birth year a particular way, that is worth more than a table.

What happens after you have your animal

In Chinese tradition the twelve animals are grouped under eight guardian figures — the birth-year guardians, or benmingfo — with some guardians watching over two animals. So once you know your animal, you can find the guardian that goes with it.

Two routes from here:

• Our FAQ page has the full animal-to-guardian table, plus the answers we get asked most about sizing, materials, shipping and returns.
• The home page has a calculator that does this lookup from a full birth date, if you would rather not read a table.

And the collection is grouped the same way, so you can go straight from a guardian to the pieces made for it.

Common questions

Is the Chinese zodiac the same as the Western zodiac? No. The Western zodiac is set by the month and day of your birth, using the sun’s position along the ecliptic. The Chinese zodiac is set by the year of your birth on a lunisolar calendar. The two systems are unrelated, and one does not replace the other.

I was born in January — does that mean I’m always the previous year’s animal? Not always, but often. It depends on whether your birthday falls before or after that year’s Lunar New Year. January birthdays are before Lunar New Year almost every year, so they usually take the previous year’s animal. For February birthdays it varies — that is why the chart lists the Lunar New Year date rather than making you guess.

What if I was born exactly on Lunar New Year day? You take the new year’s animal. Lunar New Year day is day one of that year, so the change is already in effect.

Can I wear a piece that isn’t for my own birth year? Yes. Plenty of people choose by design, by stone, or for someone else. The pairing is a tradition rather than a rule, and nothing about a piece changes based on who wears it.

Ready to find yours? Every piece on the site is grouped by the guardian of the birth year, so you can go straight from a date of birth to the jewellery made for it.

Browse the collection

Sources

The Lunar New Year dates in the chart follow the standard Chinese-timezone dates published at chinesefortunecalendar.com, and were cross-checked against the year-by-year sexagenary cycle tables in Wikipedia’s Sexagenary cycle article. Where those two agree, we have used their date; the chart stops at 2031 because sources begin to disagree on 2032 and later. The lunar animal sequence and its twelve-year cycle are traditional and not in dispute.