- Why doesn't the zodiac year start on January 1?
- The Chinese zodiac follows the lunisolar calendar, which begins at the new moon between January 21 and February 21 — Lunar New Year, also called Spring Festival. Each lunar year is named after one of the twelve animals in fixed cycle order. A baby born on, say, January 25, 2001 was born before that year's Lunar New Year (which fell on January 24) — by one day, so they're a Snake (2001 lunar year), not a Dragon (2000). Anyone using a January 1 calculator will miss those edge cases.
- What are the five elements and why do they matter?
- Traditional Chinese metaphysics pairs each zodiac animal with one of five elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, or Water. The element comes from the ten-year heavenly-stem cycle, which runs in parallel with the twelve-year animal cycle and resets every 60 years (the sexagenary cycle, 12 × 5 = 60). So someone born in 1988 isn't just a Dragon — they're an Earth Dragon. Sixty years later, in 2048, the next Earth Dragon year arrives. The element is part of the full identity of the year in traditional reckoning.
- What's Yin and Yang in the zodiac?
- Yang is associated with the sun, brightness, and active energy; Yin with the moon, shade, and receptive energy. In the zodiac, the polarity alternates year by year — Yang years pair with Yang animals (Rat, Tiger, Dragon, Horse, Monkey, Dog) and Yin years with Yin animals (Ox, Rabbit, Snake, Goat, Rooster, Pig). The polarity is encoded in the heavenly-stem cycle: even stems are Yang, odd stems are Yin. It's a coarse complementary-energy framing, not a personality test.
- What are the Three Harmonies and Six Conflicts?
- The Three Harmonies (San He) group signs that are four years apart in the cycle and traditionally considered the most natural allies — Rat-Dragon-Monkey, Ox-Snake-Rooster, Tiger-Horse-Dog, and Rabbit-Goat-Pig. The Six Conflicts (Liu Chong) group signs that are six years apart and are traditionally seen as opposing — Rat vs. Horse, Ox vs. Goat, Tiger vs. Monkey, Rabbit vs. Rooster, Dragon vs. Dog, Snake vs. Pig. The compatibility chips in this calculator come from those classical groupings.
- Is the zodiac a fortune-telling system?
- Not in any modern, predictive sense. The animal cycle dates back at least to the Han dynasty (around 200 BCE) and was used to track time, name years, and supply imagery for folklore. Treating it as a personality forecast is a modern reading. The descriptions in this calculator are cultural and symbolic — the Rat as cleverness, the Ox as steadiness, the Dragon as authority — not predictions about you. Read it as historical context, the way you'd read about Norse runes or Western astrology.
- Why is the date range 1900 to 2100?
- The Lunar New Year date for each Gregorian year is determined astronomically — it's the second new moon after the winter solstice, observed from the meridian of east-eight time. We use a hand-curated table covering 1900 through 2100 (the standard range published by the Hong Kong Observatory and other almanacs). For dates outside that range the calculator returns a clear error rather than guessing.
- Is my birthdate saved or sent anywhere?
- No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript — nothing is sent to a server, logged, or stored.
