Goat Chinese Zodiac: Years, Elements and Compatibility

The short answer

The Goat is the eighth of the twelve Chinese zodiac animals — 未, the branch that runs from 13:00 to 15:00. Its years are 1919, 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003, 2015, 2027 and 2039. The next one, 2027, is the year this page is written for. It clashes with the Ox, combines with the Horse, and closes the wood frame — the last of the four season frames, all of which an earth branch closes.

The animal has one name in Chinese and three in English: 羊 covers the group, while 绵羊, 山羊 and 公羊 narrow it. The Hong Kong Observatory's tables print "year of the Goat" for every one of the eleven years above.

Your birth date fixes which animal you are — including the case where it falls between the two new-year lines, which is where the Goat and the Ox disagree most often. For the 2027 year specifically, see the Year of the Goat page. The 1979 Goat year, Ji-wei, has its own page: both new-year lines, and the week between them.

One character, three English words

Look up the eighth animal in the cycle and the English sources do not agree with each other. Some call it the Goat. Some call it the Sheep, and some the Ram, and the three turn up in the same week of the same new year, sometimes in the same newspaper.

The disagreement is not between sources that read the Chinese differently. It is inside the translation, and the Hong Kong Observatory's tables show which way an official English rendering goes: the observatory publishes a Gregorian-Lunar conversion table for every year, headed in English, and every Goat year from the table of 1931 to the table of 2027 carries the same word in its heading — year of the *Goat*. Never sheep, never ram.

That settles usage, not meaning. The Chinese word is 羊, and when China's own international broadcaster explained the confusion to an English audience in 2015 it did not pick a side. It wrote that 2015 is the year of 羊 — yang — which it called a generic term for a group of horned, hoofed mammals, and then showed how the language narrows it when it needs to: add 绵 for the woolly one, 山 for the one on the hillside, 公 for the male. In the broadcaster's words, any of the three translations works.

So the page starts where the confusion actually lives. Not with which animal the sign is, but with the fact that Chinese never asked the question: it named the group and let the modifiers do the rest.

What the character covers

The old character dictionary is explicit about the scope. The Shuowen entry for 羊 glosses it as 祥也 — auspicious — describes the graph as a head with horns, feet and tail, and then closes with a line that matters more than the definition: 凡羊之屬皆从羊, everything of the sheep kind is written under 羊. The character is not one animal's name. It is the head of a family.

The modern dictionary entry runs the same way. Its plain gloss says the word covers a ruminant with a pair of horns and many breeds, and then illustrates the pattern with three examples: 绵羊, 黄羊, 羚羊 — the woolly one, the yellow one, the antelope. In every case the narrowing happens in front. The character stays 羊.

The branch lists agree. The Ming compendium that spends a whole chapter matching animals to branches writes the line out flatly — 故子屬鼠，丑屬牛，寅屬虎，卯屬兔，辰屬龍，巳屬蛇，午屬馬，未屬羊，申屬猴，酉屬雞，戍屬犬，亥屬豬 — and stops there. Somewhere between 100 and 200, the same sentence appears in the Han compendium with the element attached: 丑、未，亦土也。丑禽牛，未禽羊. Fourteen centuries apart, the same plain character, no breed.

Which means the three English words are not three answers to one question. They are three ways of answering a question the Chinese text did not raise. A page that picks goat, sheep or ram is choosing which horned animal to draw in the illustration; it is not deciding what the sign is.

Goat Compatibility: The Pair That Comes to Three

The six combinations in the branches are not pairings by taste. The compendium derives them arithmetically, by numbering each branch from one to six and adding: 子 is one and 丑 is two, 寅 is three and 亥 is six, and so on, so that a pair is two numbers that sum to something.

Most of the sums are nine. This pair is not. The chapter writes it as 午為一陽，未為二陰，一二得三數 — the Horse is one yang, the Goat is two yin, one and two make three — and then reports how rare that is: of the six pairs, 子丑午未各得三者，三生萬物, only these two come to three, because three is the number that generates things, while 余皆得九者，乃陽數極也, all the rest come to nine, which is where the yang count runs out.

Two of six pairs get the generating number, and this is one of them. The second half of the same chapter quotes a Tang text that grades each pair in both directions, and again the two members are treated separately: 午合未福慢，未合午大利 — the Horse combining into the Goat is slow, the Goat combining into the Horse is greatly favourable. Six combinations, twelve verdicts, and this one's two verdicts are not the same sentence.

The storehouse of the wood frame stands on an earth branch

The three-harmony frames group three branches each around one element, and the compendium gives the three positions a rhythm: 生即產，旺即成，庫即收 — birth brings forth, the peak completes, the storehouse gathers in. There are four frames, and the wood one is 亥卯未: the Pig opens it, the Rabbit is its peak, and the Goat gathers it in.

Every one of those four closing positions is an earth branch. 申子辰 closes in 辰, 寅午戌 in 戌, 巳酉丑 in 丑, 亥卯未 in 未 — and 辰, 戌, 丑 and 未 are the four earth branches of the twelve. The chapter notices why and states it as a rule: 五行不言土者，四行皆賴土成局，萬物皆歸藏於土故也, the frames are spoken of as four and not five because the other four all rely on earth to complete themselves, everything being stored in earth. Then the corollary: if all four of them turn up together, 辰戌丑未全自作土局論, they form a frame of their own.

So the Goat's branch is an earth branch doing the closing job for wood. Both halves of that sentence are in the sources at once. The almanac's scoring table, which gives every branch twenty points, gives this one twelve points of earth, five of fire and three of wood — 未：己土 12分，丁火 5分，乙木 3分 — and then explains, in the same entry, that the branch is 木之墓地, the grave of wood, and calls it 木庫, the wood storehouse. Main stem earth, role storehouse of wood. The compendium's month list says the same thing in days.

Four days that one list counts and another does not

The chapter that divides each month among the stems does not list what a branch holds. It lists who is on duty, and for how long. For this branch: 六月建未，未中有丁火用事七日，甲木墓庫五日，已土一十八日 — seven days of 丁 fire, five days in which 甲 wood is at its grave, and eighteen days of 己 earth, which is the whole thirty-day month.

Eighteen of thirty to earth is the largest single share in the month, and it is why the branch reads as earth first. But the five days are the interesting ones, because of the word used for them: 墓庫, the grave-and-storehouse. The branch that gathers the wood frame in is also described, at the stem level, as holding wood's grave for five days out of thirty.

The dictionaries count the same month differently, and the difference is small. The almanac's verse line reads 未中乙木加己丁 — earth, fire, and a wood component — and its scoring puts that wood at three points out of twenty. The engine behind this site, read straight from its source file, gives the branch 己 first, 丁 second, 乙 third. Three lists, three ways of saying the same shape: earth first by a wide margin, fire second, a wood stem last, and the amount of wood is small in every one of them.

The one place they part is which wood. The month list has 甲, the younger dictionaries have 乙, and both are wood. That is a narrower disagreement than it looks — a page can state it and move on, because the point of the section is the earth, not the variety of the last stem.

The hour the flock goes up the slope

Each branch owns two hours, and this one owns the middle of the afternoon: 13:00 to 15:00, the two hours after noon. The traditional name on the popular tables is 日昳 — the sun on the slope, past its height and heading down.

The reason given for the animal is agricultural and unusually literal. A mainland county government's page on the twelve animals says of this slot that in some places these hours are called 羊出坡, taking the flock up the slope, and that this is the good time of day for grazing — which is why the sign is 未羊. No folklore about a race or a summons; the animal is there because of a working day.

That is worth putting next to the naming problem at the top of this page. The English reader arrives with three animal words and no way to choose. The Chinese side arrives with one character, one double-hour, and a reason that is about grazing rather than about species. The Grazing animal, in a list built around the working day, is not going to settle whether it has wool.

Only four pairs carry two relations

The ring has sixty-six pairs of branches, and the named relations — the six combinations, the three harmonies, the clashes, the harms, the punishments — are not spread out evenly across them. Counted out, most pairs carry nothing at all. Twenty-nine carry exactly one relation. And exactly four pairs carry two.

The four are these: 寅 and 巳 are both a harm and a punishment; 寅 and 申 are both a clash and a punishment; 巳 and 申 are both a combination and a punishment; and 丑 and 未 are both a clash and a punishment. Punishment is on three of the four lists, which is its own observation — the punishments are the relation that doubles up.

This branch is in one of them, and the one it is in is the odd one out. 丑 and 未, Ox and Goat, are the only pair of the four whose two members belong to the same element: both are earth branches. The other three pair one element against another — wood against fire, wood against metal, fire against metal. Ox and Goat are the earth pair, and they carry a clash and a punishment between them.

It is also the only branch that does this to the Goat. Run all eleven other branches against 未 and the relation counts come out one and one and one; only 丑 shows up twice. Whichever way the page is read, the Ox is the branch the Goat shares its most crowded edge with.

The punishment whose reason the book gives twice

The three-member punishment sets are built by counting the ring, and this one is reached by counting upward to ten: 丑順至戌，戌順至未，極十數而為恃勢之刑 — from 丑 up to 戌, from 戌 up to 未, ten positions, and the set is named for relying on position. 恃勢: the strong leaning on the weak.

The name implies one mechanism. The chapter then supplies two, and they are not the same kind of explanation. The first works in elements: 丑中有旺水，丑乃水中之土，戌中有墓火，丑恃旺水刑戌中之墓火 — the Ox holds strong water and leans on the Ox's fire; and for this branch, 未有旺土，復恃勢刑丑中之旺水, the Goat holds strong earth and leans on the Ox's strong water. Earth against water, position against position.

The second works in hidden stems, and it is introduced as a separate teaching — 又云, and it is said again: 未恃丁火之勢以刑丑中之金，丑恃旺水之勢以刑戌中之火，戌恃辛金之勢以刑未中之木. Now the Goat punishes the Ox's metal through the fire inside it, and is punished through the wood inside it. Same three branches, same three punishments, a completely different set of agents.

Both are in the chapter, one after the other, without any sign that the author found them in tension. That is the honest way to report it: the relation is stable across every source consulted for this page, and the reason given for it is not, and a page that quotes one and calls it the reason is quoting half the chapter.

The harm that is not about strength

The six harms are pairs that sit badly together, and the compendium explains each one differently. The one involving this branch is stated with a direction: 子未相害者，謂未旺土，亥子旺水，名勢家相害。故子見未則為害 — the Goat's strong earth against the Rat's strong water, filed as a contest of two strong houses, and it is the Rat meeting the Goat that counts as the harm.

Then the chapter does something it does not do everywhere: it gives a second, mechanical explanation for the whole set of six, and the mechanism has nothing to do with strength. 子未直上穿心，與沖合恩未結而仇巳生，乃曰害 — the harm is what happens when a third branch combines away the one you were afraid of. The list spells it out pair by pair, and this pair's line is the clearest: 如子生人畏午沖，而未卻去合午, a person born in a Rat year fears the Horse's clash, and the Goat is what goes and combines with the Horse.

So the same pair is filed twice, on two different grounds. By strength: earth against water, two strong positions, and the Rat is the one who suffers. By arrangement: the Goat takes away the Horse that the Rat needs to be afraid of, and the harm is the removal. The second reading is stranger and more useful, because it is the only one of the six that is about a third party rather than about the two members.

The storehouses like to be shaken

The chapter on clashes opens by exempting whole groups of branches from being read as collisions at all — the four cardinal branches and the four horse branches get that treatment, 反成大格，不以衝擊論 — and then makes the opposite ruling for this group.

The four earth branches, 辰戌丑未, are the storehouses: the places where the other four elements are gathered in. And the chapter says of them, in the middle of a practical passage about reading a chart: 若戌丑辰未四庫所藏為十干財官、印綬等物，尤喜衝激 — when what is stored in the four storehouses is wealth, office or resource, they especially welcome being shaken. A clash is not a loss here. It is how the contents come out.

That gives this branch three different roles depending on which chapter is open. In the harmony section it is the closing position of the wood frame and it gets along with the Pig and the Rabbit. In the punishment and harm sections it is on the receiving end of two separate conflicts. And in the clash section it belongs to the group that is supposed to be disturbed, because a storehouse that is never shaken is a storehouse nothing comes out of.

Eleven Goat years, and the one day the two lines meet

A Goat year is not a fixed date on the Gregorian calendar. Two lines start it, depending on who is counting: the first day of the first lunar month, which is what the national standard uses for the animal, and 立春, the start of spring, which is what a chart uses for the month pillar. The Hong Kong Observatory's conversion tables print both, and reading all eleven Goat years from 1919 to 2039 out of them produces a distribution that is hard to find by accident.

In five of the eleven years, 立春 arrives first. In five, the first lunar day does. And in one — 1943 — the two lines land on the same date, 5 February. The table below gives each year's two dates and the distance between them, signed, so the five and the five and the one are visible in a column.

The widest gap in the set belongs to 2015, where the lines are fifteen days apart, and the narrowest non-zero gap belongs to 2027, at two. Nothing about the pattern is systematic: the two lines are driven by different astronomy, the new moon for the lunar month and the sun's position for the solar term, and they drift across each other over decades without a schedule.

One caution about the table. It gives dates, not times of day, and that is deliberate. The Observatory publishes minute-level times for the solar terms only for a recent window of years; for 1940–2019 the same series of pages gives the day and not the clock. A page that printed a row of precise times for this span would be printing times it could not source, so this one prints the day and the distance in days, both of which the tables carry.

Where this page can be wrong

The naming section argues that Chinese never split the animal, and that the three English words are modifiers waiting to happen. The stronger version of that claim is that one of the three is the correct rendering. This page does not make that claim, and the evidence would not carry it: the observatory's tables use Goat, domestic English-language usage does not agree, and the broadcaster's own explainer declines to choose. What can be said is narrower and still useful — the ambiguity is in the translation, not in the character, and the character is the thing being translated.

The year table has a boundary that is mine, not the calendar's. The window runs from 1919 to 2039, and the reason the earth Goat appears three times in it while the other four forms appear twice is that the window is eleven years long and both ends happen to be 己未 years. Move the window by one cycle and the counts change. The 5 / 1 / 5 split of the two new-year lines is a property of these eleven years as read from these tables, not a rule about Goat years.

The stem lists disagree in one place — which wood stem sits last in the branch — and the page states the disagreement rather than resolving it, because the sources do not resolve it. The engine's weights are the site's own reading and are published as such. And where this page has quoted a classical chapter, the chapter is linked at the foot of the page and can be read in full; where it has counted something, the count came out of the same two tables the rest of the site is built on.