Year of the Pig / Boar 亥

Year of the Pig: personality traits

Popular Chinese zodiac tradition, written plainly. For reflection, not prediction.

Character

If you were born in a Pig year, also called Boar, the popular tradition makes you the most open-handed sign in the cycle: generous, sincere and with a healthy appetite for the good things, shared. Pigs are warm, easy to be around and slow to anger, and they assume good faith in others, which more often than not creates it. The sign closes the cycle and the tradition gives it the reward of a completed year: comfort, company and a full table. A Pig is hard to dislike and does not try to be.

In love and friendship

In love the Pig is affectionate, honest and wholehearted, with no taste for games and little patience for people who play them. It wants a home full of people and food and is happiest providing both. The tradition pairs the Pig with the Rabbit and the Goat in the Wood Three Harmony and gives it the Tiger as its six-harmony partner, the bold one who takes it out into the world. Friends of a Pig get fed, forgiven and remembered.

At work and with money

At work the Pig is diligent, cooperative and good with people: hospitality, care, medicine, retail, the arts, any job where warmth is part of the work. It is not ambitious in the Dragon's sense but it is thorough, and it finishes. Money is earned steadily and spent on comfort and on other people; the tradition calls the Pig fortunate and means it has enough and shares it. It dislikes cruelty and cannot work long for people who practise it.

The growing edge

The shadow of generosity is naivety: a difficulty believing that anyone would take advantage of that trust, until someone does, and then another. The growing edge is knowing when a person is only taking, and being able to say so without losing the warmth that makes the Pig what it is. The tradition is tender with the Pig and clear with it. Good faith is a gift. It is not owed to everyone.

The five kinds of Pig

Each year pairs the Pig branch with one of five Heavenly Stem elements, so the same animal comes in five flavours across the sixty-year cycle. Popular tradition reads them like this; the hub explains why the branch element never changes.

Wood Pig · 1995 →

The Wood Pig is the most generous of a generous sign, kind and persuadable, the friend who never says no.

Fire Pig · 1947, 2007 →

The Fire Pig is ambitious and passionate, with more push than Pigs usually have and the same open hand.

Earth Pig · 1959, 2019 →

The Earth Pig is the most practical and patient, steady, home-loving and hard to rush.

Metal Pig · 1971, 2031 →

The Metal Pig is the most determined and the most outspoken, sincerity with a backbone.

Water Pig · 1983 →

The Water Pig is the most trusting and the most easily led, warmth that needs a wiser friend beside it.

Pig years

• 1947Fire Pig
• 1959Earth Pig
• 1971Metal Pig
• 1983Water Pig
• 1995Wood Pig
• 2007Fire Pig
• 2019Earth Pig
• 2031Metal Pig

The popular zodiac year starts at Lunar New Year, not 1 January. Born in January or early February, check the boundary with the finder on the hub. BaZi turns the year at Li Chun instead, which the hub also explains.

Pig compatibility

Three Harmonies · 三合

Pig 亥 · Rabbit 卯 · Goat 未. The Wood Three Harmony (亥卯未): the trio popular charts call most compatible.

Six Harmonies · 六合

Pig 亥 + Tiger 寅. The secret friend: quiet support rather than fireworks.

Clash · 六冲

Pig 亥 ↔ Snake 巳. Opposite branches: friction that takes effort, not a verdict on any real pair.

Commonly cited lucky numbers: 2, 5, 8; popular material, no canonical source. What the three structures are, and why they come before any compatibility chart, is on the hub. A full match reads all four pillars, not the year branch alone. Run a real match →

The branch 亥

Branch

亥 hài

Polarity

Yin

Branch element

Water

Direction

North-northwest

Season

Early winter, Northern Hemisphere

Chinese double-hour

21:00–23:00

亥 hài is the last branch, the yin Water branch of early winter and the double-hour before midnight. It is the year closing, Water gathering in the dark before 子 begins the cycle again. The Pig is the animal; 亥 is the branch that opens the Wood Three Harmony, because next year's growth is stored in this winter's water.