March 19 Zodiac Sign: Pisces or Aries?

March 19 is a cusp birthday: in 2 of the 87 years from 1940 to 2026 the Sun entered Aries during March 19 (US Eastern Time), so people born that day are Pisces before the change time and Aries after it; in 85 years the change came later and the whole day was Pisces. Your sign depends on the year and time of birth — see the table. Pacific Time: change during the day in 7 years, whole day Aries in 0, whole day Pisces in 80.

March 19 at a glance

• Possible Sun signs: Pisces before the change, Aries after
• Elements: Water (Pisces), Fire (Aries)
• Modalities: Mutable (Pisces), Cardinal (Aries)
• Rulers: Neptune, with Jupiter as the traditional ruler (Pisces); Mars (Aries)
• Data: NASA JPL Horizons, 1940–2030

Scroll to your birth year and pick the column for the place you were born, Eastern or Pacific. An empty time cell means March 19 was Pisces from its first minute to its last. A time in the cell divides the date: births before that minute are Pisces, births from it on are Aries. In the years that list a time, Pacific clocks ran three hours behind Eastern ones, which is why some rows carry a West Coast time while the Eastern cell stays empty. The last column can show a different date as well: the 2020 change, 23:50 EDT on March 19 in New York, is listed there as 03:50 UTC on March 20. If you were born in Central or Mountain Time, neither column is yours, so use the birth chart in the next section.

Read down the rows and a pattern shows. Up to 1999, neither column has a single time on March 19. The Pacific column gets its first entries in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016, years in which New York kept a whole Pisces day, and the Eastern column follows in 2020, 2024 and the computed 2028 row. Across 1940–2030, no row in either column turns March 19 into an all-Aries day. For the dates on either side, see March zodiac signs.

When your year lists a change time, the local time of birth decides; if you were born in a zone the table leaves out, it can. Put the birth date, hour and city into Astrolivo's free birth chart, with no account required, to check your Sun sign with your birth time. With the time field empty, the chart is calculated for 12:00 noon and marked as such; for an evening birth on March 19, look up the recorded hour before you begin.

Instead of relying on a single noon position, the calculator checks for any sign changes across your entire local birth date. If the Sun, the Moon, or another planet changes sign during that local day, the result shows each possible sign for that day rather than guessing a single one.

Astrology, the source of the two sketches that follow, is an interpretive tradition, not a scientifically validated method, so they describe signs rather than anyone born on March 19.

Up to the change, the Sun on March 19 is in Pisces, which closes the Water triplicity that also holds Cancer and Scorpio. Astrology's element scheme gives Water three qualities: cold, wet and soft. On the polarity divide, Pisces falls on the negative side, the one astrologers label receptive or yin. Its modern ruler, Neptune, is linked in astrology with tenderness and peace; Jupiter is its classical ruler. For the whole sign, open the Pisces zodiac sign.

Once the change has passed, a March 19 Sun belongs to Aries, the Fire sign that comes before Leo and Sagittarius in its triplicity. Fire's three qualities in that same scheme are hot, dry and ardent. Aries lands on the positive side of the divide, which astrologers also name active or yang. Mars rules it, and astrology puts physical activity under that planet. Go on to the Aries zodiac sign for more.

FAQ

Does a March 19 birth make someone a Pisces–Aries cusp? Only in the popular sense: "cusp" is what people call a birthday that sits close to the Pisces–Aries switch. At any one moment, though, the Sun occupies a single sign. A March 19 birth was Pisces unless the year's row shows a time and the birth came after it, in which case it was Aries.

How late in the day does Aries arrive on March 19? In the years when the change falls on March 19 at all, it comes in the evening, in US Eastern and in Pacific Time alike, across the 1940–2030 table; in every other year it came on a later date. For Eastern births the change came at 23:50 EDT in 2020 and 23:06 EDT in 2024, and the computed 2028 row gives 22:17 EDT; Pacific clocks show those moments three hours earlier. In the Pacific-only years the change fell between 21:30 PDT (2016) and 23:35 PST (2000).

How this page was made

The March 19 change times are NASA JPL Horizons positions of the Sun for 1940–2030, read on New York and Los Angeles clocks through the IANA time zone database. Facts about the two signs rest on the Wikipedia articles "Astrological sign," "Triplicity," "Astrology and the classical elements," "Planets in astrology" and "Astrology and science." The Astrolivo editorial team prepared the page from these sources and checked every statement against them; sign readings are reported as the tradition gives them.