The 36th day of the year
Born on 5 February
Every 5 February birthday from 1920 to 2026 was Aquarius, in every time zone.
- Star sign
- AquariusAir, fixed, ruled by Saturn.
- Birthstone
- AmethystThe same as on the 1912 list.
- Birth flower
- Violet, PrimroseUsually taken today to mean faithfulness and young love.
- Most common weekdays
- Thursday and Sunday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
Six new years, nineteen years apart
No date in the window has held the new year as steadily as 5 February. It fell here six times between 1920 and 2026, every nineteen years without a break: 1924, the Wood Rat; 1943, the Water Goat; 1962, the Water Tiger; 1981, the Metal Rooster; 2000, the Metal Dragon; and 2019, the Earth Pig.
The run ends there. Nineteen years after 2019 the new year falls on 4 February 2038, and the engine does not bring it back to 5 February until 2065. Lichun, the solar term that opens spring, used to fall on this date too: in Beijing it did in 22 years between 1920 and 1980, and not once since, as it has settled on the 3rd and 4th.
In all, a 5 February birthday fell before the new year in 52 years and on or after it in 55, which makes it the first date of the year on which the new year had more often come than not. Every one of those birthdays was Aquarius, in every time zone.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 5 February in any year.
Which Chinese animal, by year
From 1920 to 2026 the lunar new year, reckoned in Beijing, came after 5 February in 52 of the 107 years, and in those years a birthday on it belonged to the animal of the year before; in the other 55 the new year had already begun. It was the first day of the new year itself in 1924, 1943, 1962, 1981, 2000 and 2019.
Shaded: 5 February came before that year's new year. Hatched: the new year began on 5 February. How the new year is found →
Which weekday 5 February falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 5 February falls on every day of the week: Thursday 16, Sunday 16, Saturday 15, Monday 15, Tuesday 15, Friday 15, Wednesday 15.
Showing 5 February in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 5 February is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,778 babies were born on 5 February in each year of the twenty, making it the 289th 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 5 February
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Cristiano Ronaldo | 1985– | Portuguese association football player |
| Neymar | 1992– | Brazilian footballer |
| Charlotte Rampling | 1946– | British actress |
| William S. Burroughs | 1914–1997 | American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer |
| Robert Peel | 1788–1850 | Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1834 to 1835 and 1841 to 1846 |
| Abhishek Bachchan | 1976– | Indian actor and film producer |
| Carlos Tevez | 1984– | Argentine association football player |
| Robert Hofstadter | 1915–1990 | American physicist and Nobel laureate |
| Gheorghe Hagi | 1965– | Romanian association football player and manager |
| Adlai Stevenson II | 1900–1965 | American politician and diplomat; 31st governor of Illinois from 1949 to 1953 |
| Joris-Karl Huysmans | 1848–1907 | French novelist and art critic |
| Giovanni van Bronckhorst | 1975– | Dutch association football player and manager |
| Johan Ludvig Runeberg | 1804–1877 | Finnish poet who wrote the lyrics of Finland's national anthem |
| Alan Hodgkin | 1914–1998 | physiologist and biophysicist |
| Vedran Ćorluka | 1986– | Croatian association football player |
| Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné | 1626–1696 | French noble and epistolarian writer |
| Sven-Göran Eriksson | 1948–2024 | Swedish football manager |
| Tom Wilkinson | 1948–2023 | English actor |
Died on 5 February
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Thomas Carlyle | 1795–1881 | Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher |
| Pervez Musharraf | 1943–2023 | Pakistani soldier and politician |
| Christopher Plummer | 1929–2021 | Canadian actor |
| Kirk Douglas | 1916–2020 | American actor |
| Wassily Leontief | 1905–1999 | Russian economist |
| Lou Andreas-Salomé | 1861–1937 | German-Russian essayist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst |
| Val Logsdon Fitch | 1923–2015 | American physicist |
| Joseph L. Mankiewicz | 1909–1993 | American film director, screenwriter, and producer |
| Charles XIII | 1748–1818 | King of Sweden (1809-1818) and King of Norway (1814-1818) |
| Gnassingbé Eyadéma | 1935–2005 | President of Togo from 1967 to 2005 |
| George Arliss | 1868–1946 | English actor, author, playwright and filmmaker |
| Maharishi Mahesh Yogi | 1917–2008 | Indian spiritual leader, creator of Transcendental Meditation |
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.