Year of the Rooster / Chicken 酉

Year of the Rooster: personality traits

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

Character

If you were born in a Rooster year, the popular tradition makes you the sign that notices and says so. Roosters are precise, candid and proud of work done properly, punctual to the minute and prepared for the meeting nobody else read the papers for. They dress well, speak plainly and have standards they apply to themselves first. The sign is associated with confidence and honesty, and with a frankness that arrives before anyone asked for it. A Rooster does not do vague.

In love and friendship

In love the Rooster is loyal, attentive and more romantic than its brisk manner suggests, and it shows care through competence: the plan made, the problem fixed, the truth told. It needs a partner who can take honesty and give some back. The tradition pairs the Rooster with the Ox and the Snake in the Metal Three Harmony and gives it the Dragon as its six-harmony partner, the grand one who admires the Rooster's precision. Friends of a Rooster get straight answers and a well-organised weekend.

At work and with money

At work the Rooster is the auditor, the editor, the surgeon, the person who found the error on page forty. It suits any field where accuracy is the job: accounting, medicine, engineering, quality control, teaching, the law. Money is planned and tracked to the cent. The Rooster does badly with sloppy colleagues and loose deadlines, and will say so, which is where its career difficulties usually start.

The growing edge

The shadow of precision is vanity, and a candour that lands as criticism on the people it loves. Standards pointed at a partner or a child can curdle into perfectionism, and the Rooster is the last to notice it happening. The growing edge is softening the delivery without dulling the truth: the same accurate thing, said so it can be heard. The tradition respects the Rooster's honesty and asks it to notice that being right and being kind are not in competition, and never were.

The five kinds of Rooster

Each year pairs the Rooster 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 Rooster · 1945, 2005 →

The Wood Rooster is the most open-minded and cooperative, precise but willing to hear another method.

Fire Rooster · 1957, 2017 →

The Fire Rooster is the most theatrical, confident to the point of drama and a natural at the front of a room.

Earth Rooster · 1969, 2029 →

The Earth Rooster is the most practical, quiet and diligent, the standards kept without the announcement.

Metal Rooster · 1981 →

The Metal Rooster is the most exacting, brilliant with detail and hardest on everyone, itself included.

Water Rooster · 1993 →

The Water Rooster is the most adaptable and the most persuasive, candour with a diplomat's timing.

Rooster years

• 1945Wood Rooster
• 1957Fire Rooster
• 1969Earth Rooster
• 1981Metal Rooster
• 1993Water Rooster
• 2005Wood Rooster
• 2017Fire Rooster
• 2029Earth Rooster

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.

Rooster compatibility

Three Harmonies · 三合

Rooster 酉 · Snake 巳 · Ox 丑. The Metal Three Harmony (巳酉丑): the trio popular charts call most compatible.

Six Harmonies · 六合

Rooster 酉 + Dragon 辰. The secret friend: quiet support rather than fireworks.

Clash · 六冲

Rooster 酉 ↔ Rabbit 卯. Opposite branches: friction that takes effort, not a verdict on any real pair.

Commonly cited lucky numbers: 5, 7, 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 酉

Branch

酉 yǒu

Polarity

Yin

Branch element

Metal

Direction

West

Season

Mid-autumn, Northern Hemisphere

Chinese double-hour

17:00–19:00

酉 yǒu is the yin Metal branch of mid-autumn, the western direction and the double-hour of sunset. It is Metal at full strength, the harvest gathered and the day closing. The Rooster announces; 酉 is the branch that sits opposite 卯 the Rabbit, sunset against sunrise, which is their clash.