1979 Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Earth Goat
1979 is the year of the Yin Earth Goat. The Earth Goat year runs from January 28th, 1979 to February 15, 1980. If you were born in 1979 on or after January 28, your Chinese zodiac sign is the Goat and your element is Earth. Born earlier in January? You belong to the year before.
Born in January or early February 1979? Read this first
The Chinese zodiac year does not start on 1 January. The Earth Goat year begins on January 28th, 1979. That one date changes the answer for everyone born in the weeks before it.
You were born before the new year turned, so you belong to 1978's sign — not 1979's.
Read the 1978 page instead →The rest of this page is yours. Everything below describes the Yin Earth Goat.
This is the single most common mistake in Chinese astrology, and it is why two people born weeks apart in the same calendar year can have completely different signs.
What a Earth Goat actually is
A Earth Goat is someone born in a Goat year that also carries the Earth element. In Chinese astrology your animal is your zodiac sign (it shapes who you are), and the element is the "energy flavour" running through it that year. So a Earth Goat blends the Goat's nature with Earth's energy of stability, nourishment and loyalty — a more specific portrait than the Goat alone.
Earth in plain terms. Earth is the energy of late summer — the steady centre that everything returns to. It adds patience, reliability and a deep instinct to care for the people around them.
They are the dependable anchor others build their lives around.
Too much Earth becomes worry, over-giving or difficulty letting go.
Goat strengths and blind spots
Where you are strong. Goats create beauty wherever they land. They have refined aesthetic sense, deep empathy, and a quiet resilience that weathers storms gracefully. Their kindness is their quiet strength.
Where it costs you. Goats can be indecisive, overly sensitive to criticism, and pessimistic when energy runs low. Their preference for peace can drift into passivity.
Work that suits a Earth Goat
Artist, designer, craftsperson, therapist, teacher, botanist, florist, healer.
Read that as a description of the conditions you do your best work in, not a list you have to pick from. Earth shapes how you work as much as the Goat shapes what you are drawn to.
Who the Goat gets on with
In the classical system the twelve animals fall into groups that support each other and pairs that grind. For the Goat, the natural allies are Rabbit, Horse and Pig, and the hardest work tends to be with Ox and Dog.
Lucky colours, numbers and hours for the Earth Goat
These belong to the Goat as a sign, which means they are shared by everyone born in a Goat year. A colour chosen for you works differently: it is picked to feed whichever of the five elements your own chart is short of, and two Goats can need opposite colours for that reason.
Other Earth Goat years
The animal cycles every 12 years and the element every 10, so the exact pairing Earth Goat only comes round once every 60 years. Anyone born in these years shares your sign exactly:
Your birth year is one pillar out of four
Everything above is true of you — and equally true of everyone else born in 1979. Millions of people share the Earth Goat sign.
What separates your chart from theirs is the month, day and hour you were born. Those three add three more pillars to the one on this page. Together they decide whether your core element — the character at the centre of your chart, traditionally called your Day Master — is supported or drained, which of the five elements you are carrying too much of, which one is missing, and which ten-year cycle you are standing in right now.
That is the part a page about 1979 cannot know. It needs your birth time.
See your full chart, not just your year
Free, and it takes a birth date. Your Energy Chart reads all four pillars and shows the element balance behind them.
or browse every zodiac year →