2010 Chinese Zodiac Year: Metal Tiger Dates and Birth Lookup

By Astrolivo editorial team

In the Chinese lunisolar calendar convention used on this site, 2010 is the Year of the Metal Tiger (Geng-yin), running inclusively from February 14, 2010 through February 2, 2011. Because the 2010 Lunar New Year arrived in mid-February, anyone born between January 1, 2010 and February 13, 2010 falls under the preceding Ox year rather than the Tiger year.

2010 Birth-Date Lookup Table

Check your exact Gregorian birth date against the inclusive Lunar New Year boundaries below:

Why Birth Year Alone Is Not Enough

Because the Chinese calendar coordinates lunar months with the solar year, Lunar New Year moves each year between late January and mid-February on the Gregorian calendar. Looking only at the four-digit birth year "2010" misclassifies births during the first six weeks of the year.

Consider a hypothetical comparison between two early-2010 birth dates:

• Hypothetical birth on February 5, 2010: Because this date falls before February 14, it belongs to the closing weeks of the Ox year.
• Hypothetical birth on February 14, 2010: Because this date is Lunar New Year's Day, it marks the first day of the Metal Tiger year.

How the Metal Tiger (Geng-yin) Name Works

Traditional Chinese calendar reckoning combines Ten Heavenly Stems (Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui) with Twelve Earthly Branches (associated with the twelve zodiac animals) in a 60-year cycle anchored in modern reference tables at 1984 (Jia-zi Rat). For the lunar year beginning February 14, 2010, the stem-branch pair is *Geng-yin*:

• *Geng* is the Heavenly Stem, mapped in traditional five-phase (wuxing) correspondence to Metal.
• *Yin* is the Earthly Branch corresponding to the Tiger.

Although the Tiger appears every 12 years, its accompanying element changes as the stems cycle. The specific Geng-yin (Metal Tiger) combination recurs only once every 60 years.

How This Differs from Western Sun Signs and Four Pillars (BaZi)

• Western Sun signs: Western tropical astrology assigns signs by the Sun's position across 12 solar segments of roughly one month each. Chinese zodiac animal years cover an entire lunisolar year.
• Lunar New Year vs. Four Pillars (BaZi): This reference page uses the civil Lunar New Year date to determine the birth-year animal. In traditional Four Pillars (BaZi) astrology, the year pillar shifts at Li Chun (the solar term marking the start of spring, usually around February 4), and three additional pillars are calculated for the birth month, day, and hour. This page provides civil Lunar New Year dates, not a Four Pillars calculation.

For the full twelve-animal sequence and calendar overview, see the Chinese Zodiac guide or explore the cultural symbolism of the Tiger.

Sources and Reference Basis

Start and end dates and the Geng-yin year designation are taken from the official Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Tables for 2010 and 2011 and the HKO Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches documentation. The five-phase stem mapping (Geng = Metal) follows standard wuxing correspondence documented in Yoo & Yoon (2019, DOI: 10.14369/jkmc.2019.32.2.017). Cultural and astronomical context on the twelve-animal cycle and lunisolar calendar structure follows reference material from the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich. Astrological and zodiac systems are symbolic interpretive traditions, not scientifically validated measures of personality or future events.