Zodiac Signs in Chinese: All 12 Names & Meanings

There are two completely different things called the zodiac signs in Chinese, and almost everyone searching for one finds the other.

星座 (xīngzuò) is the Western zodiac — the twelve signs tied to your birth date, Aries through Pisces. 生肖 (shēngxiào) is the Chinese zodiac, the twelve-year animal cycle: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit and so on, tied to your birth year. They share nothing except the number twelve.

This page is about xīngzuò. If you were born in the Year of the Dragon and want to know what that means, you want shēngxiào instead, and this is the wrong page.

All 12 Zodiac Signs in Chinese

Every one ends in 座 (zuò), which means “seat” and marks the word as a constellation. Strip it off and what remains describes the figure.

Only four signs differ between simplified and traditional characters: Gemini, Leo, Virgo and Pisces. The rest are written identically in Beijing, Taipei and Hong Kong. The pronunciation is the same everywhere Mandarin is spoken — the names change only if you switch to Cantonese, where 白羊座 becomes baak6 joeng4 zo6.

Two Signs Built From Colours

This is the first thing that strikes anyone who knows the Latin names. Chinese added colour where the original had none.

Aries in Chinese: 白羊座

Báiyáng is a white ram — 白 (white) plus 羊 (sheep or goat). Nothing in Aries, in Greek Krios, or in the Babylonian original specifies a colour. The likeliest source is the myth itself: the ram of the Golden Fleece was described as white in the Chinese translations the name came through. See the Aries profile.

Taurus in Chinese: 金牛座

Jīnniú is a golden ox — 金 (gold) plus 牛 (cattle). Again, no gold anywhere in the Latin. And note 牛, which covers cattle generally rather than a bull specifically, putting Chinese alongside Swedish and Finnish in choosing an ox over a bull. More in the Taurus profile.

Two Signs Built From the Heavens

The character 天 (tiān) means sky or heaven, and two signs carry it as a prefix — marking them as celestial versions of ordinary things.

Libra in Chinese: 天秤座

秤 (chèng) is a balance or steelyard, the kind of scale a merchant uses. With 天 in front it becomes the heavenly balance. Note the pronunciation trap: 秤 is also read píng, and you will hear 天秤座 said both ways, though tiānchèng is the standard reading for the sign. The Libra profile covers the sign.

Scorpio in Chinese: 天蝎座

蝎 (xiē) is a scorpion, so 天蝎 is the heavenly scorpion. This is the sign where simplified and traditional part company most visibly: 蝎 against 蠍. See the Scorpio profile.

Two Signs Built From Pairs

Where English has a Latin plural, Chinese — which does not mark plurals — used the number two instead.

Gemini in Chinese: 双子座

双 (shuāng) means a pair, 子 (zǐ) means child or son. Paired children. Chinese could have used 孪生 (luánshēng), the medical word for twins, and did not — it chose the more literal image. The Gemini profile has more.

Pisces in Chinese: 双鱼座

双 again, plus 鱼 (yú), fish. Paired fish — and in Chinese the doubling matters more than it does in English, because 双鱼 evokes the two fish of classical Chinese ornament, a symbol of abundance long predating the zodiac’s arrival. See the Pisces profile.

The Sign That Came From Sanskrit, Not Latin

Capricorn in Chinese: 摩羯座

Here is the most interesting name in the Chinese list, and the one that reveals how the zodiac actually reached China.

摩羯 (mójié) is not a description. It is a transliteration of Makara, the Sanskrit sea-monster — a creature with the forequarters of a land animal and the tail of a fish. It entered Chinese through Buddhist scripture translated from Sanskrit, centuries before any European contact.

Which means Chinese Capricorn preserves something almost every European language lost. German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian all replaced the goat-fish with a plain mountain ibex. Chinese kept the hybrid, by way of India. The Capricorn profile has the sign.

The Remaining Four Chinese Star Signs

Cancer in Chinese: 巨蟹座

巨 (jù) is giant, 蟹 (xiè) is crab. A crab rather than the crayfish the Nordic languages chose, and a large one. Read the Cancer profile.

Leo in Chinese: 狮子座

狮子 (shīzi) is simply the word for lion. Worth noting that 狮 is itself an old loan into Chinese, since lions are not native to China — the same situation as Finnish Leijona. See the Leo profile.

Virgo in Chinese: 处女座

处女 (chǔnǚ) means virgin, directly and unambiguously — Chinese did not soften it to “maiden” the way the Scandinavian languages did. The sign carries a strong stereotype in Chinese internet culture, where 处女座 is shorthand for obsessive perfectionism, considerably more pointed than the English equivalent. More in the Virgo profile.

Sagittarius in Chinese: 射手座

射 (shè) is to shoot, 手 (shǒu) is hand — a “shooting hand”, meaning an archer or marksman. You will also see 人马座 (rénmǎ zuò), “man-horse”, the centaur, used for the astronomical constellation. For the astrological sign, 射手座 dominates. See the Sagittarius profile.

Aquarius in Chinese: 水瓶座

水瓶 (shuǐpíng) is a water bottle or jar — the vessel rather than the person carrying it. This is a real divergence: every European language on this site makes Aquarius a man who carries water. Chinese, Japanese and Korean all make it the container. See the Aquarius profile.

Talking About Zodiac Signs in Chinese

The phrases:

• 你是什么星座？ — Nǐ shì shénme xīngzuò? — What’s your star sign?
• 我是天蝎座。 — Wǒ shì tiānxiē zuò. — I’m a Scorpio.
• 你是什么属相？ — Nǐ shì shénme shǔxiàng? — What’s your animal sign? (The other question entirely.)
• 很典型的处女座。 — Hěn diǎnxíng de chǔnǚ zuò. — Very typical Virgo.

One usage note worth knowing: 星座 means both “constellation” and “astrological sign”, so context does all the work. And in casual speech the 座 is often dropped — 我是天蝎 is perfectly normal.

Xingzuo in China, Taiwan and Beyond

The Western zodiac arrived in Chinese-speaking popular culture largely through Japan in the twentieth century, and it now sits alongside the animal cycle rather than replacing it. Younger urban Chinese speakers use 星座 in dating and personality talk the way Americans use star signs; older generations are more likely to reach for 生肖. Both circulate freely, and asking which one someone means is entirely normal.

Note also that Google is not the dominant search engine in mainland China. Traffic for these terms in English-language search comes largely from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and the diaspora.

Frequently Asked Questions

Zodiac Signs in Chinese and the Languages That Borrowed From It

Chinese is the source for two other lists on this site. The zodiac signs in Vietnamese are these exact characters read with Vietnamese pronunciation, and the zodiac signs in Japanese use the same 座 suffix with native Japanese readings. Korean built the same system with its own suffix. For the European approach, compare the German list, which translated every image into native words.

All languages: zodiac signs in different languages.