2018 Chinese Zodiac Year: Earth Dog (Wu-xu)

By Astrolivo editorial team

In the Chinese lunisolar calendar convention used on this site, 2018 is the Year of the Earth Dog (Wu-xu), running inclusively from February 16, 2018 through February 4, 2019. If you were born in 2018 before February 16, your birth falls in the preceding Rooster year rather than the Dog year.

2018 Birth-Date Lookup

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

Inclusive Date Range	Chinese Zodiac Animal	Year Designation
January 1, 2018 – February 15, 2018	Rooster	Preceding lunar year (ending before the 2018 Lunar New Year)
February 16, 2018 – February 4, 2019	Dog	*Earth Dog (Wu-xu)*

To see other birth years and the full 12-animal cycle, consult the main Chinese zodiac reference.

Why the Gregorian Year Alone Is Not Enough

Because the traditional Chinese calendar is lunisolar—tracking both lunar phases and the solar year—Lunar New Year shifts between late January and mid-February on the civil Gregorian calendar. Looking only at the four-digit birth year "2018" often gives the wrong animal for January and early-February birthdays.

Consider two hypothetical birth dates in the same Gregorian year:

Hypothetical example A: A person born on January 25, 2018 was born before Lunar New Year, so their birth date falls at the end of the Rooster year.
Hypothetical example B: A person born on February 16, 2018 (or on January 20, 2019) was born within the inclusive February 16, 2018 – February 4, 2019 window, placing them in the Earth Dog (Wu-xu) year.

How the "Earth Dog" (Wu-xu) Name Works

The Chinese calendar names years using a 60-year sexagenary cycle that pairs ten Heavenly Stems (Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui) with twelve Earthly Branches (corresponding to the twelve zodiac animals: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep/Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig). In traditional five-phase (Wu Xing) mapping, the stem Wu corresponds to Earth, and the branch Xu corresponds to the Dog.

While the Dog returns every 12 years, the specific stem-and-branch pair Wu-xu (Earth Dog) repeats only once every 60 years.

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

This lookup is a calendar date reference within a symbolic interpretive tradition, not a scientific classification or a personality forecast. It also differs from two other systems people often confuse:

Western Sun signs: Western tropical astrology divides the solar year into twelve roughly month-long zodiac sign periods based on the Sun's position along the ecliptic. A Chinese zodiac animal applies to an entire lunar year.
Four Pillars (BaZi) and Li Chun: This page uses the civil Lunar New Year boundary. Traditional Four Pillars (BaZi) astrology instead changes the year pillar at Li Chun (the solar term for the start of spring, usually around early February) and calculates four separate pillars for year, month, day, and birth hour. This table is a Lunar New Year lookup, not a Li Chun or full Four Pillars calculation.

Methodology and Sources

Inclusive start and end dates and the Wu-xu year header come from the official Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) Gregorian–Lunar Calendar Conversion Tables (T2018e.txt and T2019e.txt) and the HKO Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches reference anchored by the 60-year cycle beginning with Jia-Zi in 1984. Traditional five-phase stem correspondence (Wu/Ji = Earth) follows standard historical sinological mapping documented in Yoo & Yoon (2019, DOI: 10.14369/jkmc.2019.32.2.017 abstract), and historical context on the twelve-animal cycle draws on the Victoria and Albert Museum (updated April 17, 2024) and Royal Museums Greenwich lunisolar calendar references.