What Is My Chinese Zodiac Sign and Element?

How your zodiac sign is worked out

The Chinese and Vietnamese zodiac follows the lunar year, not the calendar year. Each lunar year starts on Lunar New Year (Tết in Vietnam), usually the second new moon after the winter solstice, which lands between 21 January and 20 February. Your animal is the one of the year in progress when you were born, so the dates in January and February matter.

Every year also carries one of ten Heavenly Stems. Stem and branch together give a sixty-year cycle: 1990 is Canh Ngọ (Geng Wu) and the same pair returns in 2050. The stem supplies the element popular in Chinese horoscopes — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal or Water, each in a yang and a yin form — which is why you see labels like “Metal Horse”.

Vietnamese families more often speak of their mệnh, the nạp âm element. The sixty pairs are grouped two by two into thirty poetic elements such as Sea Metal or Heavenly River Water. The mệnh is what Vietnamese tradition uses to choose lucky colours, numbers and compatible partners, so our results list it next to the stem element.

Your Kua number combines the birth year with your gender and leads to four favourable and four unfavourable compass directions in Eight Mansions feng shui. Finally, the twelve animals form harmonious trines, “secret friend” pairs and clashing opposites — the basis of zodiac compatibility.