The 365th day of the year, the 366th in a leap year
Born on 31 December
Every 31 December birthday from 1920 to 2026 was Capricorn, in every time zone.
- Star sign
- CapricornEarth, cardinal, ruled by Saturn.
- Birthstone
- Turquoise, Zircon, TanzaniteThe 1912 list gave Turquoise and Lapis lazuli.
- Birth flower
- Narcissus, HollyUsually taken today to mean good wishes and defence.
- Most common weekdays
- Saturday and Thursday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 31 December in any year.
Which weekday 31 December falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 31 December falls on every day of the week: Saturday 16, Thursday 16, Friday 15, Sunday 15, Monday 15, Wednesday 15, Tuesday 15.
Showing 31 December in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 31 December is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,833 babies were born on 31 December in each year of the twenty, making it the 120th most common of the 366 dates, where 26 September came first with 1,974 and 26 December last with 1,359.
Office for National Statistics, How popular is your birthday? Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. What a ranking like this can and cannot say →
Born on 31 December
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Henri Matisse | 1869–1954 | French artist |
| Jacques Cartier | 1491–1557 | Breton maritime explorer of North America |
| Alex Ferguson | 1941– | Scottish association football manager and former player |
| George C. Marshall | 1880–1959 | American army officer and statesman |
| Pope Callixtus III | 1378–1458 | pope of the Catholic Church from 1455 to 1458 from the Borgia family |
| Val Kilmer | 1959–2025 | American actor |
| Andreas Vesalius | 1514–1564 | Flemish anatomist, physician and author |
| Simon Wiesenthal | 1908–2005 | Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter |
| Alex Salmond | 1954–2024 | First Minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014 |
| Avram Hershko | 1937– | Israeli biochemist |
| Émile Loubet | 1838–1929 | President of France from 1899 to 1906 |
| Seydou Doumbia | 1987– | Ivorian association football player |
| Isma'il Pasha of Egypt | 1830–1895 | Khedive of Egypt from 1863 to 1879 |
| Charles Edward Stuart | 1720–1788 | Jacobite pretender to the thrones of England, Scotland, Ireland, and France |
| Herman Boerhaave | 1668–1738 | Dutch botanist, chemist, humanist, and physician |
| Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis | 1738–1805 | British general, colonial official, diplomat |
| Gottfried August Bürger | 1747–1794 | German poet |
| Baron Waqa | 1959– | Nauruan politician |
Died on 31 December
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Pope Benedict XVI | 1927–2022 | pope of the Catholic Church from 2005 to 2013 |
| Robert Boyle | 1627–1691 | Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor; died 31 December 1691 in the Julian calendar, which is 10 January 1692 in the Gregorian |
| Miguel de Unamuno | 1864–1936 | Spanish poet |
| Marshall McLuhan | 1911–1980 | Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar |
| Pope Sylvester I | died 335 | Pope from 314 to 335 |
| John Wycliffe | died 1384 | English theologian and dissident in the Roman Catholic Church |
| Gustave Courbet | 1819–1877 | French painter |
| Betty White | 1922–2021 | American actress and comedian |
| Zviad Gamsakhurdia | 1939–1993 | Georgian dissident and writer, President of Georgia from 1991 to 1992 |
| Arnold Rüütel | 1928–2024 | President of Estonia from 2001 to 2006 |
| Aleksis Kivi | 1834–1872 | Finnish writer |
| Natalie Cole | 1950–2015 | American singer |
Names are the titles of the English Wikipedia articles; years and the short descriptions are from Wikidata, which publishes under CC0, checked and corrected by hand where they needed it, and nothing is said about anybody beyond that. Ask for a removal.