Western zodiac
Gemini
21 May - 20 Jun
AirMutableRuler: Mercury
Birthday lookup
From one date of birth, see your Western tropical zodiac sign, your Chinese animal and five-element year, and your current age in years.
Western zodiac
21 May - 20 Jun
Chinese zodiac
马 (ma) β year 1990
Age today
The twelve Western signs in this tool follow the tropical zodiac, which divides the year into twelve equal arcs starting at the spring equinox. It is the convention used in newspaper horoscopes and on most birthday cards, with the cusps falling on roughly the same Gregorian date each year. Astronomers and Vedic astrologers use a sidereal zodiac instead, which is tied to the visible constellations and currently lags the tropical signs by about 24 degrees because of the slow wobble of Earth's axis. That gap is why an internet quiz built on sidereal positions sometimes tells a Taurus they are really an Aries. We use the standard tropical cutoffs here because they are the ones most people grew up with.
The twelve animals β Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig β repeat every twelve years and come from the earthly branches of the sexagenary cycle. Layered on top is a ten-year cycle of heavenly stems that pairs the five elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water) with a yin or yang polarity. Two stems share each element, so an element such as Wood Tiger only returns every sixty years. That sixty-year combination is the βgreat cycleβ you sometimes see in folk astrology and feng shui.
The Chinese zodiac year does not start on 1 January. It starts on the lunar new year, which floats between roughly 21 January and 21 February depending on the new moon. So if you were born in late January or early February, you may belong to the previous yearβs animal. The 2026 lunar new year falls on 17 February, which means a baby born on 10 February 2026 is a Snake, not a Horse. This tool reads the Hong Kong Observatory almanac table to place each birthday on the correct side of the boundary.
Each Chinese zodiac year alternates yang and yin, in the same order as the heavenly stems. Yang years tend to be associated in tradition with outward energy and odd-numbered Gregorian year endings; yin years with inward energy and even-numbered endings, though the actual rule is the parity of the stem index. It is a structural label rather than a personality test, and we show it because the same element can be either yin or yang in different years β Yin Wood and Yang Wood are distinct entries in the cycle.
For a deeper look at the lunar new year date, year by year and culture by culture, see the lunar new year dates tool. For full Chinese lunisolar conversions, including festivals and solar terms, try the Chinese calendar converter. And for the live-ticking version of your age in seconds, with milestones and dog years, see the age calculator.
For curiosity and cultural reference only. This is not astrological guidance and makes no predictions.