Why does my birth year sometimes give the previous animal?

The Chinese zodiac year starts at Chinese New Year (a lunisolar date in late January or February), not 1 January. If you were born before that date, you belong to the previous animal year, which this tool accounts for using a Chinese New Year date table.

How accurate is the result?

For dates inside the built-in Chinese New Year table the animal and element are exact. Outside that range the tool falls back to a fixed 4 February boundary and shows a note, so verify late-January and February birth dates against the actual lunar New Year.

What animal and element is 2024?

2024 is the year of the Wood Dragon. The animal repeats every 12 years and the element every 10, so the full animal-and-element pairing repeats only every 60 years.

What are the five elements in the Chinese zodiac?

Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. Each governs two consecutive years (one yang, one yin), cycling through the 12 animals to form the 60-year sexagenary cycle.

Is my birth date sent anywhere?

No. This tool is privacy-first — your date is processed locally in your browser and never leaves your device.

Chinese Zodiac Finder

The Chinese zodiac (生肖) assigns each year an animal from a 12-year cycle, combined with one of five elements and a yin/yang polarity. Enter your birth date and this finder returns your animal, its element (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal or Water) and whether the year is yang or yin, accounting for the fact that the zodiac year does not start on 1 January.

How it works

The tool first decides which zodiac year your date falls in. Because each year begins at Chinese New Year — a lunisolar date in late January or February — anyone born before that date belongs to the previous animal year. A built-in New Year date table (1990-2030) handles this precisely; outside that range it falls back to a 4 February boundary and flags the result as approximate.

It then computes:

Animal = (zodiac year − 4) mod 12, since 4 CE was the Year of the Rat. The 12 animals run Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig.
Element and polarity from (zodiac year − 4) mod 10, mapping each pair of years to one of the five elements with alternating yang/yin.

Example

A birth date of 10 February 2024 is on or after that year’s Chinese New Year (10 February 2024), so the zodiac year is 2024. Then (2024 − 4) mod 12 = 4 → Dragon, and (2024 − 4) mod 10 = 0 → Wood, yang. The result is a Yang Wood Dragon. A date of 20 January 2024, before the New Year, would instead fall in the 2023 Year of the Rabbit.

It is privacy-first: everything runs in your browser and your date is never sent anywhere.