The 80th day of the year, the 81st in a leap year
Born on 21 March
In UTC, since 1920, 21 March has been Aries all day in 65 years. In the other 42, 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 52 more years a crossing on the day before or after fell on 21 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 42 of 107 years.
- Birthstone
- Aquamarine, BloodstoneThe 1912 list put Bloodstone first.
- Birth flower
- DaffodilUsually taken today to mean new beginnings.
- Most common weekdays
- Monday and Saturday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
Where the tables still start Aries
Printed tables start Aries on 21 March, and for much of the twentieth century that was a fair rule of thumb: the March equinox fell on this date, in UTC, in 42 of the years from 1920 to 2026. It has not done so since 2007, when it came at 00:07 UTC, seven minutes into the day.
Since 2008 the equinox has come on 20 March every year, so every 21 March birthday since then has been Aries from its first minute, as it also was in 1920, 1924 and the other years in which the equinox came early. In the years when it fell on the 21st the time moved later by roughly six hours a year and then jumped back: 03:51 UTC in 1921, 09:48 UTC in 1922, 15:29 UTC in 1923, the latest of all, and back to the 20th in 1924.
For a birth on 21 March in one of those years the rule is the same as on any crossing day, Pisces before the moment and Aries after it. Further west the date had not yet turned: the 1999 equinox, at 01:46 UTC on the 21st, was 17:46 on 20 March in Los Angeles.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 21 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 21 March that instant has fallen inside the day in 42 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 21 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 21 March — worked out from the time zones in use at that moment, as the IANA time zone database records them. A birth there on 21 March that year could be either sign, and the calculator above works it out for your own time zone.
- 1920: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 21:59 UTC
- 1924: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 21:20 UTC
- 1928: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 20:44 UTC
- 1932: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 19:54 UTC
- 1936: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 18:57 UTC
- 1940: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 18:23 UTC
- 1944: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 17:48 UTC
- 1945: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 23:38 UTC
- 1948: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 16:57 UTC
- 1949: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 22:48 UTC
- 1952: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 16:13 UTC
- 1953: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 22:01 UTC
- 1956: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 15:21 UTC
- 1957: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 21:16 UTC
- 1960: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 14:42 UTC
- 1961: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 20:32 UTC
- 1964: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 14:10 UTC
- 1965: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 20:05 UTC
- 1968: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 13:22 UTC
- 1969: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 19:08 UTC
- 1972: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 12:21 UTC
- 1973: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 18:13 UTC
- 1976: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 11:49 UTC
- 1977: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 17:43 UTC
- 1978: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 23:33 UTC
- 1980: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 11:10 UTC
- 1981: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 17:03 UTC
- 1982: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 22:55 UTC
- 1985: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 16:14 UTC
- 1986: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 22:03 UTC
- 1989: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 15:28 UTC
- 1990: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 21:19 UTC
- 1993: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 14:41 UTC
- 1994: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 20:28 UTC
- 1997: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 13:55 UTC
- 1998: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 19:54 UTC
- 2001: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 13:31 UTC
- 2002: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 19:16 UTC
- 2005: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 12:34 UTC
- 2006: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 18:25 UTC
- 2009: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 11:44 UTC
- 2010: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 17:32 UTC
- 2011: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 23:21 UTC
- 2013: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 11:02 UTC
- 2014: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 16:57 UTC
- 2015: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 22:45 UTC
- 2017: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 10:29 UTC
- 2018: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 16:15 UTC
- 2019: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 21:58 UTC
- 2022: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 15:33 UTC
- 2023: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 21:24 UTC
- 2026: the sun entered Aries on 20 March, 14:46 UTC
Which weekday 21 March falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 21 March falls on every day of the week: Monday 16, Saturday 16, Sunday 15, Tuesday 15, Wednesday 15, Friday 15, Thursday 15.
Showing 21 March in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 21 March is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,777 babies were born on 21 March in each year of the twenty, making it the 293rd 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 March
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Johann Sebastian Bach | 1685–1750 | German composer; born 21 March in the Julian calendar then used in Eisenach, which is 31 March in the Gregorian |
| Jair Bolsonaro | 1955– | 38th President of the Federative Republic of Brazil (2019–2023) |
| Joseph Fourier | 1768–1830 | French mathematician and physicist |
| Ronaldinho | 1980– | Brazilian association football player |
| Ayrton Senna | 1960–1994 | Brazilian racing driver |
| Gary Oldman | 1958– | British actor and filmmaker |
| Sergey Lavrov | 1950– | Russian politician of Armenian origin, Minister of Foreign Affairs |
| Antoine Griezmann | 1991– | French footballer |
| Slavoj Žižek | 1949– | Slovenian philosopher |
| Modest Mussorgsky | 1839–1881 | Russian composer |
| Benito Juárez | 1806–1872 | President of Mexico from 1858 to 1872 |
| Lothar Matthäus | 1961– | German association football player, manager, and pundit |
| Jordi Alba | 1989– | Spanish association football player |
| Timothy Dalton | 1946– | British actor of stage, film and television |
| Jean Paul | 1763–1825 | German Romantic writer |
| Ronald Koeman | 1963– | Dutch football coach and former football player |
| Matthew Broderick | 1962– | American actor |
| Hans-Dietrich Genscher | 1927–2016 | German politician and member of the Free Democratic Party |
Died on 21 March
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Chinua Achebe | 1930–2013 | Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic |
| Nawal El Saadawi | 1931–2021 | Egyptian feminist writer |
| Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille | 1713–1762 | French astronomer |
| George Foreman | 1949–2025 | American professional boxer |
| Robert Southey | 1774–1843 | English romantic poet |
| Thomas Cranmer | 1489–1556 | leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury |
| Frederick Winslow Taylor | 1856–1915 | American mechanical engineer |
| Alexander Glazunov | 1865–1936 | Russian composer, music teacher and conductor |
| Guadalupe Victoria | 1786–1843 | first President of Mexico, from 1824 to 1829 |
| Michael Redgrave | 1908–1985 | British actor |
| John Law | 1671–1729 | Scottish economist and banker |
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.