The 79th day of the year, the 80th in a leap year
Born on 20 March
In UTC, since 1920, 20 March has been Pisces all day in 42 years. In the other 65, the sun moved from Pisces into Aries during the day, so a birthday then is Pisces or Aries depending on the hour; the table below gives the moment. Those are UTC days: in 36 more years a crossing on the day before or after fell on 20 March by the clocks somewhere east or west of Greenwich, listed below the table.
- Star sign
- Pisces or AriesThe sun changed sign on this date in 65 of 107 years.
- Birthstone
- Aquamarine, BloodstoneThe 1912 list put Bloodstone first.
- Birth flower
- DaffodilUsually taken today to mean new beginnings.
- Most common weekdays
- Sunday and Friday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
The March equinox
The sun enters Aries at the March equinox, the moment it crosses the celestial equator heading north, so this is the equinox's date. Between 1920 and 2026 it fell on 20 March in UTC in 65 years, and it has done so every year since 2008: at 03:06 UTC in 2024, 09:01 UTC in 2025 and 14:46 UTC in 2026.
Before 2008 the equinox often came on the 21st instead, in 42 years in all, the last in 2007, and in those years a 20 March birthday was Pisces from beginning to end. 2000 matters here. It was a leap year even though it ended a century, unlike 1900, so the equinox has kept creeping earlier instead of being pushed a day later again.
For someone born on 20 March in a recent year, the hour decides it. The 2026 equinox at 14:46 UTC was 16:46 in Johannesburg and 10:46 in New York, where the clocks had already gone forward: a Johannesburg birth that morning is Pisces, one that evening Aries.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 20 March in any year.
Which sign, by year
The sun moves from Pisces into Aries at an instant that falls about six hours later each year and jumps back most of a day at each leap year. On 20 March that instant has fallen inside the day in 65 years since 1920; those years show the moment, in UTC and to the minute. A birth before it is Pisces, after it Aries. To read one of these times on your own clock on 20 March, 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 Aries 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 20 March — worked out from the time zones in use at that moment, as the IANA time zone database records them. A birth there on 20 March that year could be either sign, and the calculator above works it out for your own time zone.
- 1921: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 03:51 UTC
- 1922: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 09:48 UTC
- 1925: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 03:12 UTC
- 1926: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 09:01 UTC
- 1929: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 02:35 UTC
- 1930: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 08:30 UTC
- 1933: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 01:43 UTC
- 1934: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 07:27 UTC
- 1937: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 00:45 UTC
- 1938: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 06:43 UTC
- 1941: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 00:21 UTC
- 1942: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 06:10 UTC
- 1946: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 05:32 UTC
- 1947: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 11:13 UTC
- 1950: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 04:35 UTC
- 1951: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 10:26 UTC
- 1954: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 03:53 UTC
- 1955: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 09:35 UTC
- 1958: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 03:05 UTC
- 1959: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 08:55 UTC
- 1962: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 02:30 UTC
- 1963: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 08:20 UTC
- 1966: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 01:52 UTC
- 1967: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 07:37 UTC
- 1970: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 00:56 UTC
- 1971: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 06:38 UTC
- 1974: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 00:06 UTC
- 1975: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 05:57 UTC
- 1979: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 05:22 UTC
- 1983: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 04:39 UTC
- 1987: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 03:52 UTC
- 1991: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 03:02 UTC
- 1995: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 02:15 UTC
- 1999: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 01:46 UTC
- 2003: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 01:00 UTC
- 2007: the sun entered Aries on 21 March, 00:07 UTC
Which weekday 20 March falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 20 March falls on every day of the week: Sunday 16, Friday 16, Saturday 15, Monday 15, Tuesday 15, Thursday 15, Wednesday 15.
Showing 20 March in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 20 March is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,795 babies were born on 20 March in each year of the twenty, making it the 225th 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 20 March
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Ovid | 43 BC–17 AD | Roman poet |
| Henrik Ibsen | 1828–1906 | Norwegian playwright and theatre director |
| Chester Bennington | 1976–2017 | American singer, songwriter and musician |
| Fernando Torres | 1984– | Spanish footballer and manager |
| B. F. Skinner | 1904–1990 | American behaviorist |
| John de Lancie | 1948– | American actor |
| Napoleon II | 1811–1832 | Son of Napoleon I, disputed Emperor of the French in 1815 |
| Fred Rogers | 1928–2003 | American television personality |
| William Hurt | 1950–2022 | American actor |
| Holly Hunter | 1958– | American actress |
| Abdul Hamid I | 1725–1789 | 27th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1774–1789) |
| Ivan Mazepa | 1639–1709 | Hetman of the Cossack Hetmanate from 1687 to 1709 |
| Spike Lee | 1957– | American filmmaker |
| Catherine Ashton | 1956– | British politician |
| Marcos Rojo | 1990– | Argentine association football player |
| René Coty | 1882–1962 | 17th President of the French Republic |
| Brian Mulroney | 1939–2024 | Prime Minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993 |
| Frederick Winslow Taylor | 1856–1915 | American mechanical engineer |
Died on 20 March
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Lev Yashin | 1929–1990 | Soviet football goalkeeper |
| Ferdinand Foch | 1851–1929 | French marshal and military theorist |
| Kenny Rogers | 1938–2020 | American country singer |
| Pope Clement III | 1130–1191 | Pope from 1187 to 1191 |
| Henry IV of England | 1367–1413 | King of England from 1399 to 1413 |
| Polykarp Kusch | 1911–1993 | German-American physicist |
| Juliana of the Netherlands | 1909–2004 | Queen of the Netherlands from 1948 to 1980 |
| Lajos Kossuth | 1802–1894 | Hungarian politician |
| George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston | 1859–1925 | Viceroy of India and British Foreign Secretary |
| Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor | 1557–1619 | Holy Roman Emperor |
| Carl Theodor Dreyer | 1889–1968 | Danish film director |
| David Rockefeller | 1915–2017 | American banker and philanthropist |
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.