What Chinese Zodiac Is 2038? Year of the Earth Horse

2038 Lunar New Year: start and end dates

Lunar New Year opened the Earth Horse year on February 4, 2038, and the year ran to January 23, 2039. So a birth date of Feb 4, 2038 or later counts as Earth Horse, and so do early 2039 birthdays through Jan 23; births in 2038 before Feb 4 still belong to the Fire Snake. 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: 1978 are Earth Horse years too. That Thursday new year arrived with the Sun in Aquarius in the Western zodiac.

What the Earth Horse is like

A Horse that stays the course is the traditional picture of this year. With Fire generating Earth, readings describe reasonable, reliable people who still love movement and variety. Those born now are dependable companions. Building adventure into a settled life, and voicing their need for freedom openly, helps them honour both sides. Their warmth tends to make even ordinary routines feel like shared adventures for the people around them.

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.

2038 in the animal cycle and in numerology

In numerology the digits reduce to 4, the number of structure, effort and foundations, which gives a 4 year a reputation for steady, practical work. The digits of 2038 add up to 13, which reduces to 4. The Horse holds the seventh place among the twelve animals and its fixed element is Fire. Set beside the year's Earth stem, fire generates Earth, which readings use to describe how settled or stretched the combination feels. The year before was the Fire Snake and the year after is the Earth Goat.

Chinese almanacs name 2038 Wu-Wu, pairing the Earth stem Wu with the branch Wu. Both are Yang, 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.