What Chinese Zodiac Is 2009? Year of the Earth Ox

2009 Lunar New Year: start and end dates

Lunar New Year opened the Earth Ox year on January 26, 2009, and the year ran to February 13, 2010. So a birth date of Jan 26, 2009 or later counts as Earth Ox, and so do early 2010 birthdays through Feb 13; births in 2009 before Jan 26 still belong to the Earth Rat. That moving boundary comes from the lunisolar calendar, in which the new year starts with the second new moon after the winter solstice in most years, so its Gregorian date shifts by up to a month from one year to the next. Look sixty years either side and the pairing repeats: 1949 are Earth Ox years too. That Monday new year arrived with the Sun in Aquarius in the Western zodiac.

What the Earth Ox is like

Double Earth makes this Ox year a byword for reliability. Those born now are pictured as methodical, frugal and loyal, people whose quiet effort holds families and workplaces together. Their endurance is remarkable. The heaviness that doubled Earth can bring is best lifted, most readings say, by play, music, delegation and the occasional deliberate break from routine. Small rituals of rest matter as much as their hard work.

In classical thought, Earth belongs to the centre and to the late-summer pause between seasons, the point where things ripen and settle. As a year stem, it tends to slow an animal down in a useful way, adding prudence, loyalty and a strong sense of responsibility. People born under an Earth stem are often described as dependable, sensible and protective of the people they love. They value security and tend to build carefully. The caution traditionally attached to Earth is caution itself: overthinking, clinging to the familiar and carrying other people's problems as though they were their own.

2009 in the animal cycle and in numerology

In numerology the digits of this year add up to 11, a master number kept whole, linked with intuition, inspiration and nervous intensity. The digits of 2009 add up to 11. The Ox holds the second place among the twelve animals and its fixed element is Earth. Set beside the year's Earth stem, earth year element matches the fixed element, which readings use to describe how settled or stretched the combination feels. The year before was the Earth Rat and the year after is the Metal Tiger.

Chinese almanacs name 2009 Ji-Chou, pairing the Earth stem Ji with the branch Chou. Both are Yin, as stem and branch always share a polarity, so of the hundred and twenty possible pairings only sixty ever occur, and each one names a single year in every cycle.