The Chinese zodiac

The twelve animals

The second name for each is its earthly branch, in pinyin.

The year turns at the lunar new year, not 1 January

The new year falls on the second new moon after the December solstice, which lands somewhere between 21 January and 20 February. Anyone born from 1 January up to that date was born in the animal year before the one usually printed for the calendar year of their birth. The table gives the date for each of the 30 years the chart above draws.

Computed from the lunar calendar, not from the year number alone.

Why there is a 60-year cycle

The animal repeats every twelve years. It is paired with one of five elements — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water — and each element lasts two years, so the elements take ten years to come round. A cycle of twelve and a cycle of ten line up again only after sixty years, their least common multiple, so the same animal-and-element pairing, such as a Fire Rat or a Metal Ox, recurs every sixty years. The current animal, Horse, takes the five elements in turn, the next one each time it comes round, so the Metal Horse of 1930 came round again in 1990:

Read on

• Rat
• Ox
• Tiger
• Rabbit
• Dragon
• Snake
• Horse
• Goat
• Monkey
• Rooster
• Dog
• Pig
• The Western zodiac