2014 Chinese Zodiac Year: Wood Horse Dates and Birth Lookup

By Astrolivo editorial team

In the Chinese lunisolar calendar convention used on this site, 2014 is the Year of the Wood Horse (Jia-wu), running inclusively from January 31, 2014 through February 18, 2015. Because Lunar New Year fell on the final day of January, anyone born between January 1, 2014 and January 30, 2014 belongs to the preceding Snake year rather than the Horse year.

2014 Birth-Date Lookup Table

Use your exact Gregorian birth date to check which Chinese zodiac sign applies under the civil Lunar New Year boundary:

Inclusive Gregorian Date Range	Chinese Zodiac Animal	Year Designation
January 1, 2014 – January 30, 2014	Snake	Previous lunar year (ends the day before 2014 Lunar New Year)
January 31, 2014 – February 18, 2015	Horse	*Wood Horse (Jia-wu)*

Why Birth Year Alone Is Not Enough

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, aligning lunar months with the solar year. Because Lunar New Year shifts between late January and mid-February on the Gregorian calendar, knowing only that someone was born in "2014" is not enough to identify their zodiac animal if their birthday is in January.

Consider a hypothetical comparison between two January 2014 birth dates:

Hypothetical birth on January 20, 2014: Because this date precedes the January 31 Lunar New Year, the birth falls in the closing days of the Snake year.
Hypothetical birth on January 31, 2014: Because this date is Lunar New Year's Day, the birth falls on the first day of the Wood Horse year.

How the Wood Horse (Jia-wu) Name Works

Traditional Chinese calendar naming pairs Ten Heavenly Stems (Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui) with Twelve Earthly Branches (the twelve zodiac animals) to form a 60-year cycle anchored in modern reference tables at 1984 (Jia-zi Rat). For the lunar year starting January 31, 2014, the stem-branch pair is *Jia-wu*:

*Jia* is the first Heavenly Stem, which corresponds in traditional five-phase (wuxing) mapping to Wood.
*Wu* is the Earthly Branch corresponding to the Horse.

While the Horse recurs every 12 years, its paired stem rotates through the five elements. Only one Horse year every 60 years carries the Jia-wu (Wood Horse) designation.

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

Western Sun signs: Tropical Western astrology divides the solar year into 12 roughly month-long signs defined by the Sun's position on the ecliptic. A Chinese zodiac animal year spans a full lunisolar year.
Lunar New Year vs. Four Pillars (BaZi): This lookup page uses the civil Lunar New Year boundary. Traditional Four Pillars (BaZi) systems switch the year pillar at the solar term Li Chun (start of spring, around early February) and calculate four pillars for the birth year, month, day, and hour. This page provides a civil Lunar New Year date lookup, not a Four Pillars chart.

Compare all twelve signs and cycle rules on the Chinese Zodiac overview page or read the cultural profile for the Horse.

Sources and Reference Basis

Start and end dates and the Jia-wu year header are sourced from the official Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Tables for 2014 and 2015 and the HKO Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches reference. The five-phase stem mapping (Jia = Wood) follows standard cultural correspondence documented in Yoo & Yoon (2019, DOI: 10.14369/jkmc.2019.32.2.017). Historical and calendar background follows reference material from the Victoria and Albert Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich. Astrological and zodiac traditions are symbolic interpretive frameworks, not scientifically validated predictors of character or life events.