The Chinese zodiac is a twelve-year cycle, one animal per lunar year, in this order: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig.
2027 is the Year of the Goat, starting 6 February. It is the year you are in if you were born from that date onwards. Born before it, and you are still a Horse.
How the cycle works
The Chinese zodiac, 生肖 shēngxiào, assigns one animal to each lunar year. Twelve animals, twelve years, then it starts again. Your animal is decided entirely by the year you were born in.
Underneath the animals sits a longer cycle. Ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches combine into sixty pairs, so a specific combination repeats only every sixty years. That is why 2027 is called 丁未 Dīng Wèi and not just "the Goat year". Anyone old enough to have lived through a full sixty-year turn is said to have completed a whole cycle, which is a real milestone in Chinese families.
Each year also carries one of five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. Animal plus element gives sixty combinations. 2027 is a fire year, so the full name is the Fire Goat. A Fire Goat year last came round in 1967 and will not come again until 2087.
All twelve, with the years they cover
Find your birth year, then read the date caveat underneath. The row in red is the current year.
| # | Animal | Chinese | Pinyin | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rat | 鼠 | shǔ | 2020 · 2008 · 1996 · 1984 |
| 2 | Ox | 牛 | niú | 2021 · 2009 · 1997 · 1985 |
| 3 | Tiger | 虎 | hǔ | 2022 · 2010 · 1998 · 1986 |
| 4 | Rabbit | 兔 | tù | 2023 · 2011 · 1999 · 1987 |
| 5 | Dragon | 龙 | lóng | 2024 · 2012 · 2000 · 1988 |
| 6 | Snake | 蛇 | shé | 2025 · 2013 · 2001 · 1989 |
| 7 | Horse | 马 | mǎ | 2026 · 2014 · 2002 · 1990 |
| 8 | Goat 2027 | 羊 | yáng | 2027 · 2015 · 2003 · 1991 |
| 9 | Monkey | 猴 | hóu | 2028 · 2016 · 2004 · 1992 |
| 10 | Rooster | 鸡 | jī | 2029 · 2017 · 2005 · 1993 |
| 11 | Dog | 狗 | gǒu | 2030 · 2018 · 2006 · 1994 |
| 12 | Pig | 猪 | zhū | 2031 · 2019 · 2007 · 1995 |
The date matters as much as the year. A zodiac year begins at Chinese New Year, which moves. In 2027 it begins 6 February. In 2028 it begins 26 January. If you were born in January or the first days of February, check the exact start date for your birth year before you accept what a website tells you. The festival calendar lists the dates.
Working out your own sign
If your birthday falls comfortably in the middle of a year, the table above is all you need. If it falls in January or early February, you have two steps instead of one.
- Find your birth year in the table. Say you were born in 1991. That row says Goat.
- Now check whether you were born before or after that year's Chinese New Year. Spring Festival 1991 fell on 15 February. A birthday of 3 February 1991 belongs to the Horse year instead, because the Goat year had not started yet.
For anyone who prefers arithmetic to tables: subtract four from the year, divide by twelve, and take the remainder. A remainder of zero is the Rat, one is the Ox, two is the Tiger, and so on round to eleven for the Pig. It gives the same answer as the table, and it still needs the same date check.
What the animals are called in Chinese
These are ordinary words, not zodiac vocabulary. 马 means horse in any context, and you will meet all twelve in normal reading long before you need them for a birth-year conversation.
Asking someone what they are
This is where the zodiac stops being trivia and becomes a conversation you can have. The verb is 属 shǔ, to belong to. It is used for zodiac signs and almost nowhere else.
That last one deserves an explanation. Every twelve years you meet your own animal again, and the year is called 本命年 běnmìngnián. Tradition says it is a year to be careful, and the standard remedy is red: red underwear, a red belt, a red string on the wrist. If a Chinese friend turns up in an uncharacteristically red outfit, the zodiac is usually why.
You can also work backwards with the zodiac, and people do.
Ask someone older than you what animal they are and you have just narrowed their age to one of five possibilities within a sixty-year span. It is a polite way of getting close to a question you are not supposed to ask directly.
Where the animals came from
The popular story is a race. The Jade Emperor decided to name the years after animals and held a contest: the first twelve to cross a river would each get one. Rat and Cat were friends and agreed to wake each other, but Rat slipped away alone. He rode across on Ox's back and jumped off at the bank to finish first. Ox came second. Cat woke up to find the race over, and has been chasing Rat ever since. Pig arrived last, having stopped to eat and nap on the way.
The story explains a lot that would otherwise seem arbitrary: why Rat leads despite being the smallest, why Ox is second, and why there is no cat. It is a folk tale rather than history, and versions differ on the details, usually over who tricked whom.
Historically the twelve animals were fixed long before anyone was writing them down as entertainment.
The earthly-branch system they attach to is older than the animals now paired with it. The animals seem to have been a memory aid, an easy way for ordinary people to keep track of a twelve-year count without needing to read.
What it is used for today
A few things, at wildly different levels of seriousness.
Couples check compatibility, and some families still consult a fortune teller before a wedding or a business opening. In the run-up to a new year, everyone learns which animal is coming, because it shapes the greetings, the merchandise and a lot of the advertising. Parents sometimes pick a birth year deliberately, though not always in the direction outsiders assume. The birth-rate spikes recorded in Dragon years across several Chinese-speaking societies are the clearest evidence that people take the calendar seriously.
Worth being clear about: the personality sketches you find online, generous Rat, stubborn Ox, dramatic Dragon, are popular entertainment rather than a predictive system. Chinese people swap them the way English speakers swap star signs, with roughly the same level of belief. Learn them as culture and vocabulary. Do not use them to form a view of a person.
Where outsiders tend to get it wrong
Goat, Sheep and Ram are the same animal
Chinese has one word here, 羊 yáng. English translators split it three ways, and which one you see depends on who did the translating. 2027 gets called the Year of the Goat, the Year of the Sheep and the Year of the Ram, and all three are the same year. Mainland Chinese sources lean towards Sheep; most English-language coverage says Goat.
The zodiac year is not the calendar year
This is the mistake almost everyone makes at least once. 1 January 2027 is not the start of the Goat year. 6 February is. Anyone born in that gap belongs to the previous animal, and Chinese friends will correct you on it, kindly, every single time.
Twelve animals is not the whole system
There are also five elements and sixty stem-branch pairs, which is why two people born twelve years apart do not have identical readings. If a Chinese friend says their year is 甲子 rather than "the Rat", they are giving you the full sixty-year designation, not showing off.
Pick a Chinese name that fits the calendar
Chinese names are often chosen with the zodiac in mind, along with sound, meaning and the family's expectations. The name generator handles the whole thing, including the characters and what they mean.