Baby Zodiac Sign by Birth Date: Find Your Baby's Sign

Your baby’s zodiac sign, the one people mean when they say “what sign is she”, is their Sun sign: the part of the sky the Sun was standing in at the moment they were born. Because the Sun takes about a month to cross each sign, the birth date alone tells you the answer for most babies.

Find the date here.

The twelve signs by birth date

Sign	Born	Symbol	Element
Aries	around 21 March to 19 April	the ram	fire
Taurus	around 20 April to 20 May	the bull	earth
Gemini	around 21 May to 20 June	the twins	air
Cancer	around 21 June to 22 July	the crab	water
Leo	around 23 July to 22 August	the lion	fire
Virgo	around 23 August to 22 September	the maiden	earth
Libra	around 23 September to 22 October	the scales	air
Scorpio	around 23 October to 21 November	the scorpion	water
Sagittarius	around 22 November to 21 December	the archer	fire
Capricorn	around 22 December to 19 January	the sea goat	earth
Aquarius	around 20 January to 18 February	the water bearer	air
Pisces	around 19 February to 20 March	the fishes	water

If your baby’s birthday is comfortably inside one of these ranges, say 4 May or 30 October or 10 January, that is the sign, and it is certain. Go and read it: every name in the table links to the full reading of that sign as a baby and a small child. You can see all twelve together on the signs page.

If the birthday is on or next to the first or last day of a range, keep reading. The word “around” in that table is there for a reason.

Is the birthday close to a change? Check here

These are the birth dates where the sign depends on the year, the time of day and the place. If your baby was born on one of these days, do not trust a printed table, including ours. Check the exact position of the Sun (how to do that is further down).

The change	Check if born between
Pisces to Aries	19 and 22 March
Aries to Taurus	18 and 21 April
Taurus to Gemini	19 and 22 May
Gemini to Cancer	19 and 22 June
Cancer to Leo	21 and 24 July
Leo to Virgo	21 and 24 August
Virgo to Libra	21 and 24 September
Libra to Scorpio	21 and 24 October
Scorpio to Sagittarius	20 and 23 November
Sagittarius to Capricorn	20 and 23 December
Capricorn to Aquarius	18 and 21 January
Aquarius to Pisces	17 and 20 February

These windows are a little wider than they need to be, on purpose. Better to check a baby who turns out to be safely inside a sign than to miss one who is not.

Why the dates move from year to year

A sign is not really a set of dates. It is a slice of the sky.

Picture the path the Sun seems to travel across the sky over a year. Astrologers divide that path into twelve equal slices, one for each sign, each slice 30 degrees wide. The first slice, Aries, starts at the March equinox: the moment in spring when day and night are about the same length everywhere. The other eleven follow in order. The Sun moves about one degree a day, which is why each sign lasts roughly a month.

The trouble is the calendar. A year is not exactly 365 days. It is about 365 and a quarter. So each ordinary year, the equinox comes about six hours later by the clock than the year before. Every fourth year, the leap day on 29 February pulls it back again. Because every sign is measured from the equinox, every sign change slides about the same way.

You can see the pattern in the March equinox itself, given here in Universal Time (UTC, the world’s reference clock, the same as winter time in the UK):

Year	The Sun enters Aries (UTC)
2024	20 March, 03:06
2025	20 March, 09:01
2026	20 March, 14:46
2027	20 March, 20:24

Six hours later each year, almost to the minute. Then 2028, a leap year, brings it back to the early hours of 20 March, and the slow climb starts again.

This is why one website says your baby is a Pisces and another says Aries. Both are using a rough table. Neither has looked at the actual moment. For the full story of what a cusp is and is not, see born on the cusp.

Why the birth time and place matter on a boundary day

The Sun crosses from one sign into the next at one single moment for the whole world. What is different from place to place is what the clocks said at that moment.

Take the March equinox of 2024, at 03:06 UTC on 20 March.

In London, the clocks were on winter time (the same as UTC), so the Sun entered Aries at 3.06 in the morning on 20 March. A London baby born at 1 am that day was a Pisces. A London baby born at 5 am the same day was an Aries, even though most printed tables would call 20 March a Pisces date.
In New York, the clocks were four hours behind UTC that week. So the same moment fell at 11.06 pm on 19 March, local time. A New York baby born at 11.30 pm on 19 March 2024 was an Aries, on a date that every simple table gives to Pisces.

Same instant in the sky. Two different dates on two birth certificates.

This is why, near a boundary, you need three things:

The date of birth.
The time of birth, as exactly as you have it.
The place of birth, so the time can be turned into world time.

With those three, there is always a clear answer. A baby is never half one sign and half another. The Sun is either at the last degree of one sign or the first degree of the next, and the moment of birth decides which.

Time zones and summer time

The birth time on a certificate or in hospital notes is the local clock time where the baby was born. That includes summer time, if the clocks had gone forward.

This matters in two ways.

If you use a chart calculator (there are many free ones online), type in the town of birth, not just the country. A good calculator then looks up the time zone and the summer time rule for that date and place by itself. You do not need to do the sums.

If a calculator asks you for the time zone yourself, take care. Put in the zone that was in force on the day of birth, including summer time if the clocks were forward. A one-hour mistake does not matter for a baby born in the middle of a sign, but it can flip the answer for a baby born near a change, and it changes the rising sign for every baby.

A few other cases:

Born abroad. Use the place where the baby was actually born, not where the family lives. A baby born on holiday in Spain is read from Spain.
Born on a journey. If a baby arrives in a car or an ambulance, use the nearest town you can name. Near a boundary, a few miles will not change the Sun sign; it is the clock time that counts.
Born just after midnight. Make sure you know which date the time belongs to. “12.15 on the night of the 20th” can mean very different things to different people. The birth record is the safe source.

The due date and the real birthday

Many people look up a sign before the baby is born, using the due date. That is a lovely thing to do, as long as you know it is a guess.

A due date is an estimate. It is usually worked out as 40 weeks from the first day of the last period, and it may be adjusted after an early scan. But the NHS describes a normal pregnancy as lasting anywhere from 37 to 42 weeks. That is a five-week window. A sign lasts about four and a half weeks. So almost any due date has at least two possible signs inside it, and a due date near a boundary could easily go either way.

Your baby’s sign is always the sign of the real birth, not the due date. The sky reads the moment the baby arrives. A baby due as a Leo who comes two weeks early is a Cancer, and the Cancer reading is the one that will fit.

A few things this means in practice:

Before the birth, think in pairs. If the due date is 20 July, read both Cancer and Leo. Some families enjoy reading the two elements, water and fire in this case, and waiting to see which baby arrives.
Early babies. A baby born early takes the sign of the day they were born. There is no “real” sign waiting at the due date.
Late babies. The same is true the other way round.
Planned births. When a birth is planned for a set day, the sign is still read from the moment the baby is actually born. The timing of a birth is a medical matter for the family and their midwife or doctor, and the sky reads whatever moment it turns out to be.

If you are choosing a name or a gift before the birth, a theme that works for both signs, or for the season, saves you a guess. There are ideas in zodiac baby names and zodiac baby gifts.

Twins born on different sides of a change

Twins are usually born close together, and they almost always share a Sun sign. But it can happen that the Sun changes sign between the first and the second baby. Then each twin has a different Sun sign, and each one is read on its own.

More often, twins share the Sun but differ in their rising sign, which changes about every two hours, and sometimes in their Moon, which changes sign every two to three days. That is one reason twins can feel so different from each other from the very start. See Sun, Moon and rising.

If your baby was born on a boundary day, here is the simplest way to settle it for good.

Find the birth time. Look on the birth certificate if it shows one (not every country records it), in the hospital or maternity notes, in the red book or baby record, or in your own messages from the day. A time to the nearest quarter of an hour is enough for the Sun in almost every case.
Open any free birth chart calculator. Type the date, the time and the town of birth.
Look for one line only: the Sun. It will say something like “Sun 0 degrees Aries” or “Sun 29 degrees Pisces”. That is your answer, and it will not change.
Ignore the rest for now. The rest of the chart is worth reading, but not today.

If you do not have the birth time at all, see what you need for a baby’s birth chart, which covers missing times with care. In short: read both possible signs, and over the next year or two, one of them will keep fitting and the other will not.

What the Sun sign tells you, and what it does not

The Sun sign is the child’s central light. It describes the character they are growing into: the drive, the style, the thing that makes them them. In a baby, it shows in how they reach for the world. An Aries baby reaches fast. A Taurus baby reaches slowly and holds on. A Gemini baby reaches with the eyes first.

The element of the sign gives you a quick first picture:

Fire babies (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) move first and think on the way.
Earth babies (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) trust what they can hold.
Air babies (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) live one question ahead of the answer.
Water babies (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) read the room before they read you.

For more on those four, see the four elements before the twelve signs. For the second layer, how each sign starts, holds on or changes, see cardinal, fixed and mutable signs in children.

But the Sun is one voice of three. A baby has a whole sky.

What to do next: the Moon and the rising sign

Once you have the Sun sign, two more placements will tell you a great deal, especially in the first years.

The Moon sign is where the Moon was at the moment of birth. It describes needs, comfort and feeling: what settles your baby, what they reach for when they are upset. In a baby, the Moon is often louder than the Sun. The Moon moves fast, changing sign every two to three days, so you need the birth date and usually the time to find it. All twelve are read in the Moon signs. If the Sun and Moon were in the same sign at the moment of birth, which happens around the New Moon, your baby is a double sign, and that has its own reading.

The rising sign, also called the ascendant, is the sign coming up over the eastern horizon at the moment and place of birth. It describes how a child meets a new room and the first face they show. It changes about every two hours, so it needs both the exact time and the place. See the rising sign in children.

With all three, you can begin to read the whole chart. Start with Sun, Moon and rising, then go on to how to read a child’s birth chart and the houses in a birth chart.

One note on care: a baby’s full birth date, time and place are private details. Use them to look up the chart, and keep them out of public posts.

Quick questions

What zodiac sign is my baby if they were born on the 20th? It depends on the month. In most months the 20th is safely inside one sign, but in several months the 20th, 21st or 22nd sits right on a change. Check the “close to a change” table above. If the date falls inside one of those windows, use the birth time and a chart calculator.

Two websites give my baby different signs. Which is right? Neither, until you check. Both are using a rough table. Put the date, time and town of birth into a chart calculator and read the position of the Sun. That one answer is final.

Is my baby a mix of two signs if born on the cusp? No. At the moment of birth the Sun was in one sign only. A baby born at the very end of a sign, or the very start of the next, has a strong and special flavour of that one sign. The born on the cusp page explains this in full.

My baby came early. Do I use the due date sign? No. Use the real birth date. The sign belongs to the moment the baby arrived.

Does the sign change if we move country? No. The sign is fixed at the moment and place of birth. Moving house, or country, does not change it.

Can my baby and I share a sign? Yes, if you were born in the same slice of the year. Then you are both, for example, Leos. It is a warm thing to share, and it brings its own small clashes. See the parent readings for your sign with every child’s sign.

Sources and references

Time and Date: why the March equinox falls on different dates, on the yearly drift and the leap-year reset.
US National Weather Service: seasons table from the US Naval Observatory, equinox dates and times in UTC.
NHS: due date calculator, on how a due date is estimated and the normal length of pregnancy.