The 142nd day of the year, the 143rd in a leap year
Born on 22 May
In UTC, since 1920, 22 May has been Gemini all day in 103 years. In the other 4, the sun moved from Taurus into Gemini during the day, so a birthday then is Taurus or Gemini depending on the hour; the table below gives the moment. Those are UTC days: in 37 more years a crossing on the day before or after fell on 22 May by the clocks somewhere east or west of Greenwich, listed below the table.
- Star sign
- Taurus or GeminiThe sun changed sign on this date in 4 of 107 years.
- Birthstone
- EmeraldThe same as on the 1912 list.
- Birth flower
- Lily of the valley, HawthornUsually taken today to mean returning happiness and hope.
- Most common weekdays
- Sunday and Friday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
Gemini's almost without exception
Gemini has had 22 May almost to itself. The sun entered it on this date, in UTC, only in 1923, 1927, 1931 and 1935, at 02:45 UTC, 02:08 UTC, 01:15 UTC and 00:25 UTC, each in the small hours and each earlier than the last. A birth on 22 May 1923 before quarter to three in the morning, UTC, was Taurus.
They are the same four years in which the sun reached Taurus on 21 April, a month before, because both crossings sit at the late end of the same four-year drift.
Since 1935 every 22 May birthday has been Gemini from the first minute in UTC. Further east the day starts earlier, and in 37 years a crossing late on 21 May in UTC fell on 22 May somewhere whose clocks were ahead of Greenwich. In 1939 the sun entered Gemini at 23:26 UTC on 21 May, which was 01:26 on 22 May in Johannesburg, so a Johannesburg birth in the first hour and a half of that 22 May was Taurus.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 22 May in any year.
Which sign, by year
The sun moves from Taurus into Gemini at an instant that falls about six hours later each year and jumps back most of a day at each leap year. On 22 May that instant has fallen inside the day in 4 years since 1920; those years show the moment, in UTC and to the minute. A birth before it is Taurus, after it Gemini. To read one of these times on your own clock on 22 May, 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 Gemini 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 22 May — worked out from the time zones in use at that moment, as the IANA time zone database records them. A birth there on 22 May that year could be either sign, and the calculator above works it out for your own time zone.
- 1921: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 15:17 UTC
- 1922: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 21:10 UTC
- 1925: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 14:33 UTC
- 1926: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 20:15 UTC
- 1929: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 13:47 UTC
- 1930: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 19:42 UTC
- 1933: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 12:57 UTC
- 1934: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 18:35 UTC
- 1937: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 11:57 UTC
- 1938: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 17:50 UTC
- 1939: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 23:26 UTC
- 1941: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 11:23 UTC
- 1942: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 17:08 UTC
- 1943: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 23:03 UTC
- 1946: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 16:34 UTC
- 1947: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 22:09 UTC
- 1950: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 15:27 UTC
- 1951: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 21:15 UTC
- 1954: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 14:48 UTC
- 1955: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 20:25 UTC
- 1958: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 13:51 UTC
- 1959: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 19:42 UTC
- 1962: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 13:17 UTC
- 1963: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 18:58 UTC
- 1966: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 12:32 UTC
- 1967: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 18:18 UTC
- 1970: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 11:38 UTC
- 1971: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 17:15 UTC
- 1975: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 16:23 UTC
- 1979: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 15:54 UTC
- 1983: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 15:06 UTC
- 1987: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 14:10 UTC
- 1991: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 13:20 UTC
- 1995: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 12:34 UTC
- 1999: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 11:52 UTC
- 2003: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 11:13 UTC
- 2007: the sun entered Gemini on 21 May, 10:12 UTC
Which weekday 22 May falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 22 May falls on every day of the week: Sunday 16, Friday 16, Saturday 15, Monday 15, Tuesday 15, Thursday 15, Wednesday 15.
Showing 22 May in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 22 May is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,855 babies were born on 22 May in each year of the twenty, making it the 79th 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 22 May
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Richard Wagner | 1813–1883 | German composer |
| Arthur Conan Doyle | 1859–1930 | British writer and physician |
| Novak Djokovic | 1987– | Serbian tennis player |
| Charles Aznavour | 1924–2018 | Armenian-French singer and diplomat |
| Laurence Olivier | 1907–1989 | English actor and director |
| Mary Cassatt | 1844–1926 | American painter and printmaker |
| George Best | 1946–2005 | Northern Irish footballer |
| Naomi Campbell | 1970– | British model |
| Ted Kaczynski | 1942–2023 | American mathematician and domestic terrorist |
| Betty Williams | 1943–2020 | Northern Irish peace activist |
| Arturo Vidal | 1987– | Chilean association football player |
| Gérard de Nerval | 1808–1855 | French writer, poet, essayist and translator |
| Shuji Nakamura | 1954– | Japanese doctor of Engineering, inventor of the blue LED, 2014 Nobel laureate in Physics |
| Hergé | 1907–1983 | Belgian comics writer |
| Harvey Milk | 1930–1978 | American politician and gay rights activist |
| Raja Ram Mohan Roy | 1772–1833 | Indian religious, social, and educational reformer, and humanitarian |
| Symon Petliura | 1879–1926 | Ukrainian military leader; 22 May is his birthday in the Gregorian calendar, 10 May in the Julian |
| Arseniy Yatsenyuk | 1974– | Ukrainian lawyer, economist and politician |
Died on 22 May
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Victor Hugo | 1802–1885 | French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician |
| Constantine the Great | 272–337 | Roman emperor from 306 to 337 and first to convert to Christianity |
| Langston Hughes | 1901–1967 | American writer and social activist |
| Pope Alexander VII | 1599–1667 | pope of the Catholic Church from 1655 to 1667 |
| Jules Renard | 1864–1910 | French author |
| Martha Washington | 1731–1802 | First Lady of the United States from 1789 to 1797 |
| Cevdet Sunay | 1899–1982 | 5th President of the Republic of Turkey |
| Francesco Guicciardini | 1483–1540 | Italian writer, historian and politician |
| Albert Claude | 1899–1983 | Belgian-American cell biologist |
| Alfred Hershey | 1908–1997 | American bacteriologist and geneticist |
| Sher Shah Suri | 1486–1545 | Founder of the Suri Empire in India |
| Martin Gardner | 1914–2010 | American mathematics and science writer |
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.