Chinese Lunar Calendar

LunarCal

Perpetual Chinese Calendar

User's Guide

LunarCal User's Guide

What Animal Am I?

In the Chinese zodiac, there are 12 animal signs which are similar to the western zodiac. However, in the western zodiac the signs are fixed in the period of occurrence and repeats every year. Whereas in the Chinese zodiac, each animal sign spans successive lunar years over a 12 year period and then repeats. The sequence of the Chinese zodiac is as follows:- Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Chicken (Fowl), Dog and lastly, Pig (Boar). Some people considers the usage of Chicken and Pig a little crude and prefers to use Fowl and Boar instead.

Each animal sign possesses certain characteristics in relation to life, luck, work, love, character, wealth, etc. Since this is a site about lunar calendar and not astrology, I shall not cover this. There are numerous fortune telling web sites around.

Many people have emailed me to ask "what animal am I?". Here's the answer.

Use the "Calculate my Chinese Age" to calculate your age. The program will tell you which animal sign you were born under. This feature is only available from version 7.00 onwards.

Previous method

The older method (deprecated) is by setting the LunarCal local datetime to your birthday. Then popup up the context menu (right click) and select "Display", "Lunar Summary". Look at the Sexagenary Cycle row - this will tell you you animal sign. In case your birthday falls very close to a particular Chinese New Year date, you may have to do a little more checking. This is because LunarCal displays the New Year closest to your selected datetime. Popup the menu and select "Display", "Next 12 Chinese New years". You will see a list of 12 Chinese New Years with the start date of year year. Now you must check that your birthday falls on of after the date of the Chinese New Year. That year is your animal sign.

	For example, if you were born on Feb 15, 1980, you were born in the lunar year of the Sheep (Jan 28, 1979 - Feb 15, 1980). But if your were born on Feb 16, 1980 then you were born in the lunar year of the Monkey (Feb 16, 1980 - Feb 5, 1981).

	Here is another example: Assume your birthday falls on Jan 23, 1963 Here is how you determine your animal sign: Right click on LunarCal, ->Display Next 12 Chinese New Years and leave screen as is. Then right click again ->Set DateTime ->Set Local DateTime and then enter the year 1963, month 1, day 1 and click ok. The time (hours, min, secs) are not important. Now you will see 12 Chinese New Years displayed but the 1st on the list is Fri Jan 25, 1963. Your birthday occurs before this date. So hit PageUp button and the list now changes and displays Mon Feb 5, 1962 as the previous Chinese New Year. Now your birthday falls after this date. So your animal sign belongs to this year ie. Chinese Year of 1962 giving animal sign of Water[+]-Tiger or Ren-Yin. You have to ensure that your birthdate falls on or after the date of the Chinese New Year and use that Chinese lunar year to determine your animal sign.