Enter a birth year and this calculator returns the corresponding Chinese zodiac animal, cycling through the twelve-animal sequence — rat, ox, tiger and so on — that repeats every twelve years. Because the Chinese calendar is lunar, the changeover doesn't happen on 1 January; it falls on Chinese New Year, typically somewhere between late January and mid-February, which the calculator accounts for automatically.
Anyone born in the first weeks of a calendar year should check their exact birth date against that year's Chinese New Year date rather than assuming the calendar year and zodiac year always line up, since people born before the lunar new year actually belong to the previous animal's year.
Cookie policy