Chinese zodiac years

Find your birth year in the table below and read across. The one thing that catches people out is the start date: the Chinese zodiac year begins at Chinese New Year, which falls between 21 January and 20 February, not on 1 January. If you were born before that date, your sign is the previous year's.

Almost always a January or early February birthday. Roughly one birthday in nine falls before Chinese New Year, and any calculator that simply divides the calendar year by twelve gets those wrong. The New Year column here shows the exact date each zodiac year began.

The five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal and water — run on a ten-year cycle, two years each. Combined with the twelve animals that produces a sixty-year cycle, which is why a Wood Dragon comes round only once in a lifetime rather than every twelve years.

Each year is also yin or yang, alternating strictly. It follows from the same ten-year stem cycle as the element, so an animal always carries the same polarity — every Dragon year is yang, every Snake year is yin.