2027: the Year of the Fire Goat
2027 is 丁未 dīng wèi — the Fire Goat. Lunar new year begins on February 6, 2027, and the year runs until January 26, 2028. Below: what the name actually means, and where each of the twelve animals stands.
羊 yáng — the goat, 丁未 in the sixty-year cycle.
What 丁未 means
Chinese year names are built from two cycles running at once. The first character comes from the ten heavenly stems, the second from the twelve earthly branches — and each branch owns one animal. 2027 lands on 丁 and 未.
未 (wèi) is the eighth branch, and its animal is the goat. 丁 (dīng) is the fourth stem, associated with yin fire — which is why you will see the year written as the Fire Goat. Fire years come in pairs: a yang fire year (丙) followed by a yin fire year (丁). 2027 is the yin half.
Because the two cycles have lengths of ten and twelve, they only line up in the same combination every sixty years. The last 丁未 year was 1967; the next will be 2087. If you want the machinery, see the sixty-year cycle and the earthly branches.
When the year starts
Not on January 1. The 2027 lunar year opens at Chinese New Year on February 6, 2027, and closes the day before the next one, on January 26, 2028. Anyone born in January or the first days of February 2027 still belongs to 2026’s animal. The zodiac finder takes an exact birth date so those cases come out right.
The character 羊
The oracle-bone 羊 is a goat or sheep's head seen head-on, with two horns curving down and out. It's one of the clearest pictographs in the set — and the same character covers both goat and sheep in Chinese, which is why the zodiac sign is translated either way.
Xu Shen opened his dictionary entry on this character with 羊，祥也 — sheep is auspicious. The animal and the good luck were the same word. That is a more interesting thing to know about 2027 than any forecast.
The twelve animals in 2027
In the traditional 合冲害 system, each sign sits in a fixed relationship to the year’s animal. Here is how they line up against the goat:
Red labels are the traditionally favourable ties — 六合 (the closest pairing), 三合 (a supporting trio), and the sign’s own year.
What this page is: 合冲害 is a traditional Chinese way of talking about relationships between the twelve signs. It is folklore, not prediction — treat it the way you would treat a horoscope column. The part of this page you can actually learn something from is the character.