The Automatic East Asian Zodiac Calculator
Calculating dates is confusing! So here, I have eliminated the guesswork for you. The latest version (1.0) of the calculator can be downloaded here.
Intro & Instructions
When I write characters, their east Asian zodiac is oftentimes important to their development. However, the lunar year is fickle, and of course, it never syncs up with the solar year in a satisfying way. This is compounded with the fact that finding when lunar cycles begin and end gets hard when you travel far into the future or the past!
This calculator is an easy-to-use spreadsheet: all it requires is a year of birth in the designated cell (F2). It will then generate the surrounding years of the cycle and show you which animal and element dominated for the year you provided!
Known Bugs
As with any programming project, bugs are to be expected. Despite my best efforts, there are a few bugs I managed to find in the calculator:
- birth years within four years of the end of a cycle cause the next cycle to display instead;
- the lunar cycle number occasionally displays wrong, as with the 78th cycle (1984—2044);
- and the calculator does not have any way to tell when lunar new year is for every year. Some births in January, February, and sometimes even March are a part of the “previous” year, as the date of lunar new year differs every year. Therefore, this calculator only provides a vague estimate for those born early in the year.
I did my best to work around them, but I couldn’t tell myself in good faith that I could find and fix those bugs within a timely manner. I know myself well enough to say that if I didn’t release this now, then I would never fix those bugs or re-release it later.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions on this project! I want to hear what you have to say!
File Specs
Current version: 1.0
File type: .xsls (Microsoft Excel spreadsheet)