Chinese Zodiac

Year of the Rooster 鸡

Precise, candid, and proud of a job done right.

The Rooster keeps standards. People born in Rooster years tend to be observant, exacting, and refreshingly direct — noticing the detail everyone else glossed over and saying plainly what others only imply.

Years of the Rooster

Recent and upcoming Rooster years are 1981, 1993, 2005, 2017, 2029, 2041. One catch worth knowing: the Chinese zodiac year doesn't begin on January 1st — it starts at the lunar new year, in late January or February. If you were born in January or early February, check the exact cutoff for your year before you count yourself a Rooster.

Rooster personality

Meticulous, honest, and hardworking. A Rooster's eye for detail and willingness to speak straight makes it the one who catches the mistake early.

Directness can read as criticism, and high standards as perfectionism — a Rooster may hold others (and itself) to a bar that leaves little room to breathe.

Rooster compatibility

Rooster pairs well with the disciplined Ox and strategic Snake, who appreciate its precision. The friction with Rabbit, its opposite, is bluntness meeting a sign that prefers tact.

In the zodiac's structure, the Rooster sits in a trine group (三合) with Ox and Snake — signs that tend to share its pace — and directly opposite Rabbit, its clash pair (六冲). A clash isn't a verdict, though: it usually means two people reaching the same goal by opposite routes.

Beyond the year

Your animal sign comes from your birth year alone — the coarsest layer of a Chinese chart. Its fixed element is Metal, but a full BaZi (八字) reading adds your month, day, and hour, which is where most of your actual character shows up. Two Rooster people born years apart can be very different once the rest of the chart is drawn.