What Chinese Zodiac Is 1943? Year of the Water Goat

When the 1943 Water Goat year starts and ends

The 1943 Water Goat year began at Lunar New Year on February 5, 1943 and lasted until January 24, 1944, the day before the next new year. Anyone born between January 1 and Feb 5 1943 therefore belongs to the Water Horse year that started in 1942, while someone born in early 1944, up to Jan 24, is still a Water Goat. The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, which is why the start date moves between January 21 and February 20 instead of staying on January 1. The same Water Goat combination also falls in 2003, sixty years apart, because five elements and twelve animals realign only once in each sixty-year cycle. Lunar New Year 1943 fell on a Friday, while the Western Sun was in Aquarius.

Water Goat personality

A Water Goat year is linked with empathic, imaginative and adaptable people. The Goat's Earth holds Water like soft banks around a pond, so traditional readings describe deep feelings held in calm. Those born then often have gifts for music, writing or care. The usual caution is absorbing other people's moods and struggling to make firm decisions. Quiet places and kind company restore them quickly.

Water is the element of winter, stillness and depth, and a Water year is traditionally said to give any animal intuition, flexibility and a gift for communication. Descriptions associate it with wisdom, empathy and the ability to find a way around obstacles rather than through them. Water-year people are often portrayed as perceptive listeners, diplomatic and quietly persuasive, able to sense the mood of a room before anyone speaks. The element is linked with reflection and with the unseen, so it adds an inward, thoughtful layer. Its shadow, in most readings, is drift: indecision, secrecy, and a tendency to take on the shape of whoever is nearby.

1943 in numerology and the twelve-year cycle

In numerology the digits reduce to 8, associated with ambition, authority and material results, so an 8 year is described in terms of effort and reward. The digits of 1943 add up to 17, which reduces to 8. In the twelve-year cycle the Goat is the eighth animal, earthly branch Wei, with Earth as its fixed element and Yin polarity. The year element is Water, and in the five-element cycles earth controls Water. The year before was the Water Horse and the year after is the Wood Monkey.

In the traditional sexagenary count the year is called Gui-Wei: Gui is the Water heavenly stem and Wei is the Goat's earthly branch. Stems and branches alternate between yang and yin together, which is why yin stems only ever meet yin animals.