Zodiac Signs in Danish: All 12 Names, One of Which Means Jellyfish

The zodiac signs in Danish are all ordinary Danish words rather than Latin borrowings — a ram, a bull, a crayfish, a set of scales. One of them is also the everyday Danish word for jellyfish, which makes announcing your sign a stranger experience in Copenhagen than in London. The Danish term for a star sign is stjernetegn, and that is the word Danes use in conversation.

This guide covers all twelve Danish zodiac signs with pronunciation, literal meanings, date ranges, and both of the forms each name takes.

All 12 Zodiac Signs in Danish

Here are the Danish zodiac sign names in astrological order, with the English equivalent, an approximate pronunciation, the literal meaning, and dates written the Danish way.

Danish pronunciation drifts further from its spelling than any other Nordic language, and it has a glottal catch called stød with no English equivalent. The respellings above are approximations.

Danish Zodiac Signs Have Two Forms — and Three Endings

None of those names is the bare noun. Danish glues its definite article onto the end of the word: vædder is “ram”, vædderen is “the ram”. When a Dane states their own sign they drop the ending — “jeg er vædder”, never “jeg er vædderen”.

Unlike Swedish, the Danish ending is not consistent, because it depends on how the noun forms its plural. Three patterns cover all twelve star signs in Danish:

• -en for ordinary singulars — Tyren, Krebsen, Løven, Vægten.
• -erne for plurals that already end in -er — tvillinger becomes Tvillingerne.
• -ene for plurals with no ending at all — fisk is both “fish” and “fishes”, giving Fiskene.

How to Say Each of the Zodiac Signs in Danish

Twelve entries, one per sign: the Danish word, where it comes from, and what it carries that the English name does not.

Aries in Danish: Vædderen

The Danish word for Aries is Vædderen, from vædder, “ram”. It descends from Old Norse veðr and is the same ancient word as English “wether”, a farmer’s term for a ram. The double d is the hardest sound in the whole list: Danish soft d is made with the tongue low and flat, closer to the th in “father” than to an English d. Get that one consonant right and your Danish improves audibly. The sign is covered in the full Aries profile.

Taurus in Danish: Tyren

Tyr, from Old Norse þjórr, is a bull — intact and unambiguous. Swedish went the other way and named this sign Oxen, the working ox. Danish and Norwegian both keep the bull, so Danish Taurus is a more forceful animal than its Swedish counterpart. See the Taurus profile.

Gemini in Danish: Tvillingerne

Built on tve-, an old form of “two”, exactly as English “twin” is built on “two”. Plural, hence the -erne ending. More in the Gemini profile.

Cancer in Danish: Krebsen

A crayfish, not a crab. Danish has krabbe for crab and does not use it astrologically. Krebs also carries the older medical sense of cancer the disease, from the same ancient image of a tumour with claws. Read the Cancer profile.

Leo in Danish: Løven

Løve entered Danish from Latin leo by way of Low German, making it one of the few Danish zodiac signs with Latin in its ancestry. The ø is the rounded front vowel of German ö or French eu. See the Leo profile.

Virgo in Danish: Jomfruen

Jomfru is a compressed “young lady” and meant an unmarried gentlewoman in older Danish. It survives in one gloriously specific piece of vocabulary: jomfruhummer, “maiden lobster”, is Danish for langoustine. Danish chose the maiden over the virgin, which softens the sign considerably. More in the Virgo profile.

Libra in Danish: Vægten

Vægt means both “weight” and “a set of scales” — the device in a Danish bathroom is a vægt, and so is the instrument held by the constellation. Danish never bothered to separate the measure from the tool. The Libra profile covers the sign.

Scorpio in Danish: Skorpionen

The one straightforward loanword among the astrological signs in Danish. Denmark has no scorpions and therefore had no native word, so the Latin arrived whole and unchanged. See the Scorpio profile.

Sagittarius in Danish: Skytten

Skytte means shooter or marksman, from skyde, “to shoot” — the bow has vanished from the name. This word is also the clearest audible difference between Danish and Swedish: both spell it Skytten, but Danish keeps a hard sk (“SKÜT-ten”) while Swedish turns the same letters into a breathy back-of-the-throat sound (“SHÜT-ten”). Identical on the page, unmistakable out loud. See the Sagittarius profile.

Capricorn in Danish: Stenbukken

Sten (stone) plus buk (buck): the ibex, the wild goat of bare rock. The fish tail of the Babylonian sea-goat is gone entirely from the Danish name, as it is across Scandinavia. Read the Capricorn profile.

Aquarius in Danish: Vandmanden

This is the one that catches everyone. Vandmand is literally “water man” and it is the name of the sign — but in everyday Danish, vandmand is also the ordinary word for a jellyfish, and that is the more common sense. Danes hear both at once, so “jeg er vandmand” reads as “I’m an Aquarius” or “I’m a jellyfish” depending on how generous the listener is feeling, and Danish horoscope headlines exploit it freely. Note too that the d in vand is silent: “VAN-man-en”. The Aquarius profile has the sign itself.

Pisces in Danish: Fiskene

Plural, matching the Latin. Fisk takes no plural ending in Danish, so “the fishes” is Fiskene rather than Fiskerne — worth getting right, because fiskerne means “the fishermen”. See the Pisces profile.

Danish Star Sign Vocabulary and Phrases

The vocabulary that surrounds the twelve names:

And the sentences you will actually hear:

• Hvad er dit stjernetegn? — What’s your star sign?
• Jeg er krebs. — I’m a Cancer.
• Mit stjernetegn er Vægten. — My star sign is Libra.
• Jeg er født i Løvens tegn. — I was born under the sign of Leo.
• Hvilket tegn er du? — Which sign are you?
• Typisk skorpion! — Typical Scorpio!

Astrology and Stjernetegn in Denmark

Danish tabloids Ekstra Bladet and BT carry daily horoskop columns, and the women’s weeklies — Femina, Alt for damerne — have run them for generations. As across the rest of Scandinavia the register is dry and self-aware.

Danish horoscope copy tends to be shorter and funnier than its English equivalent, and earnest translations land badly. If you are localising astrology content for Denmark, cut the mysticism by roughly half and let the Danish star signs speak plainly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Zodiac Signs in Danish and Its Neighbouring Languages

Danish is closest to Norwegian, which shares almost every word but spells six of them two different ways, and then to Swedish, which swaps the bull for an ox at Taurus. Finnish is next door geographically and entirely unrelated linguistically.

All ten languages together: zodiac signs in different languages.