The 21st day of the year
Born on 21 January
In UTC, since 1920, 21 January has been Aquarius all day in 92 years. In the other 15, the sun moved from Capricorn into Aquarius during the day, so a birthday then is Capricorn or Aquarius depending on the hour; the table below gives the moment. Those are UTC days: in 53 more years a crossing on the day before or after fell on 21 January by the clocks somewhere east or west of Greenwich, listed below the table.
- Star sign
- Capricorn or AquariusThe sun changed sign on this date in 15 of 107 years.
- Birthstone
- GarnetThe same as on the 1912 list.
- Birth flower
- Carnation, SnowdropUsually taken today to mean devotion and hope.
- Most common weekdays
- Wednesday and Saturday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
The earliest the new year can come
21 January is the earliest date on which the lunar new year has fallen, and between 1920 and 2026 it fell here once, on 21 January 1966, the first day of the year of the Fire Horse. In every other year from 1920 to 2026 the new year came later, so a 21 January birthday belongs to the animal of the year before. Someone born on 21 January 1990 belongs to the Earth Snake, not the Metal Horse, because the Horse did not begin until 27 January. The engine finds the new year on this date twice more before 2100, in 2061 and 2099.
The sign settled over the same century. From 1920 to 1964 the sun entered Aquarius on 21 January in 15 years, always in the first hours of the day: at 08:04 UTC in 1920, the latest, and at 00:41 UTC in 1964, the last time it happened. In those years a birth in the early morning, before the crossing, was still Capricorn. Since 1965 the crossing has come on the 19th or 20th, and every 21 January birthday has been Aquarius from midnight to midnight in UTC.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 21 January in any year.
Which sign, by year
The sun moves from Capricorn into Aquarius at an instant that falls about six hours later each year and jumps back most of a day at each leap year. On 21 January that instant has fallen inside the day in 15 years since 1920; those years show the moment, in UTC and to the minute. A birth before it is Capricorn, after it Aquarius. To read one of these times on your own clock on 21 January, add your time zone's offset east of Greenwich or subtract it to the west, or put the year into the calculator above, which works in your own time zone.
Every year from 1920 to 2026. Where a cell shows a time, the sun entered Aquarius at that moment, UTC. Why the day moves →
Other time zones
A date begins earlier east of Greenwich and later to the west, so in these years the sun changed sign on the day before or after in UTC, at a moment when clocks somewhere on earth already, or still, showed 21 January — worked out from the time zones in use at that moment, as the IANA time zone database records them. A birth there on 21 January that year could be either sign, and the calculator above works it out for your own time zone.
- 1921: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 13:55 UTC
- 1922: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 19:48 UTC
- 1925: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 13:20 UTC
- 1926: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 19:13 UTC
- 1929: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 12:42 UTC
- 1930: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 18:33 UTC
- 1933: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 11:53 UTC
- 1934: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 17:37 UTC
- 1935: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 23:28 UTC
- 1937: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 11:01 UTC
- 1938: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 16:59 UTC
- 1939: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 22:51 UTC
- 1942: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 16:24 UTC
- 1943: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 22:19 UTC
- 1946: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 15:45 UTC
- 1947: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 21:32 UTC
- 1950: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 15:00 UTC
- 1951: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 20:52 UTC
- 1954: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 14:11 UTC
- 1955: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 20:02 UTC
- 1958: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 13:29 UTC
- 1959: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 19:19 UTC
- 1962: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 12:58 UTC
- 1963: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 18:54 UTC
- 1966: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 12:20 UTC
- 1967: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 18:07 UTC
- 1968: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 23:54 UTC
- 1970: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 11:24 UTC
- 1971: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 17:13 UTC
- 1972: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 22:59 UTC
- 1975: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 16:36 UTC
- 1976: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 22:25 UTC
- 1979: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 16:00 UTC
- 1980: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 21:49 UTC
- 1983: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 15:17 UTC
- 1984: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 21:05 UTC
- 1987: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 14:40 UTC
- 1988: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 20:25 UTC
- 1991: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 13:47 UTC
- 1992: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 19:33 UTC
- 1995: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 13:01 UTC
- 1996: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 18:53 UTC
- 1999: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 12:37 UTC
- 2000: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 18:23 UTC
- 2003: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 11:53 UTC
- 2004: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 17:42 UTC
- 2007: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 11:01 UTC
- 2008: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 16:44 UTC
- 2011: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 10:19 UTC
- 2012: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 16:10 UTC
- 2016: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 15:27 UTC
- 2020: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 14:55 UTC
- 2024: the sun entered Aquarius on 20 January, 14:07 UTC
Which Chinese animal, by year
From 1920 to 2026 the lunar new year, reckoned in Beijing, came after 21 January in 106 of the 107 years, and in those years a birthday on it belonged to the animal of the year before; in the other 1 the new year had already begun. It was the first day of the new year itself in 1966.
Shaded: 21 January came before that year's new year. Hatched: the new year began on 21 January. How the new year is found →
Which weekday 21 January falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 21 January falls on every day of the week: Wednesday 16, Saturday 16, Friday 15, Sunday 15, Monday 15, Thursday 15, Tuesday 15.
Showing 21 January in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 21 January is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,757 babies were born on 21 January in each year of the twenty, making it the 341st 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 21 January
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Grigori Rasputin | 1869–1916 | Russian mystic |
| IShowSpeed | 2005– | American influencer, musician and online streamer |
| Paul Allen | 1953–2018 | American businessman and philanthropist, co-founder of Microsoft |
| Plácido Domingo | 1941– | Spanish tenor and conductor |
| Christian Dior | 1905–1957 | French fashion designer |
| Geena Davis | 1956– | American actress |
| Charles V of France | 1338–1380 | King of France from 1364 to 1380 |
| Trương Tấn Sang | 1949– | former president of Vietnam |
| Henrikh Mkhitaryan | 1989– | Armenian association football player |
| Oscar II | 1829–1907 | King of Sweden from 1872 to 1907 and Norway from 1872 to 1905 |
| Stonewall Jackson | 1824–1863 | general of the Confederate Army in the American Civil War |
| Hakeem Olajuwon | 1963– | Nigerian-American basketball player |
| Marco Asensio | 1996– | Spanish association football player |
| Konrad Emil Bloch | 1912–2000 | German American biochemist |
| Benny Hill | 1924–1992 | British comedian and actor |
| Emma Bunton | 1976– | British singer |
| Paul Scofield | 1922–2008 | British actor |
| Ingrid Alexandra, Crown Princess of Norway | 2004– | Crown Princess of Norway |
Died on 21 January
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Vladimir Lenin | 1870–1924 | founding leader of the Soviet Union |
| George Orwell | 1903–1950 | British writer and journalist |
| Louis XVI | 1754–1793 | King of France and Navarre from 1774 to 1791, then King of the French from 1791 to 1792 |
| Alexander Herzen | 1812–1870 | Russian author, philosopher, and revolutionary |
| Baron d'Holbach | 1723–1789 | German-born French philosopher |
| Camillo Golgi | 1843–1926 | Italian physician, pathologist, scientist, and Nobel laureate |
| Georges Méliès | 1861–1938 | French filmmaker and illusionist |
| Pope Paschal II | died 1118 | Head of the Catholic Church from 1099 to 1118 |
| Mustafa III | 1717–1774 | 26th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1757–1774) |
| Cecil B. DeMille | 1881–1959 | American film director, producer and actor |
| Franz Grillparzer | 1791–1872 | Austrian dramatist and poet |
| Yemelyan Pugachev | 1742–1775 | leader of a Russian peasant uprising |
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.