Tian Gan Di Zhi converter. Any Gregorian date → 60甲子 stem-branch combo (year/month/day) with element + zodiac + 纳音.
Tian Gan Di Zhi Converter (天干地支)
How to use
Enter a Gregorian date
Any date from 1900 to 2100.
Read year/month/day stem-branch
Three sets are shown — year pillar, month pillar, day pillar.
Identify the Five Element
Each heavenly stem maps to one of the 5 elements (wood/fire/earth/metal/water), colour-coded.
Check 纳音 + zodiac
纳音 is a finer 5-element classification (60-year cycle); zodiac is the animal of the year branch.
Tian Gan Di Zhi: The 60-Jiazi Chinese Era Counting System
Tian Gan Di Zhi (天干地支, often "ganzhi" for short) is the Chinese traditional system for marking years, months, days, and hours. Earliest evidence dates to the Shang dynasty oracle bones (~1300 BCE). The system combines 10 Heavenly Stems (甲乙丙丁戊己庚辛壬癸) and 12 Earthly Branches (子丑寅卯辰巳午未申酉戌亥), producing a full cycle of 60 ("Sixty Jiazi").
Combination rule
Stems and branches pair up, but only yin-yin or yang-yang combinations are valid (甲 pairs with 子 but not 丑). 10 × 12 doesn\'t expand to 120 — only 60 valid pairs exist (each stem with 6 branches, each branch with 5 stems). An early Chinese application of combinatorial mathematics.
Uses
(1) Year marking: 2026 = 丙午 year. (2) Bazi: birth year/month/day/hour each get a stem-branch pair (= 8 characters). (3) Classical writing: Chinese historical texts use ganzhi dates rather than Gregorian. (4) Solar terms: 24 solar terms also pair with stems and branches. This tool is the fast lookup utility.
ASEAN Chinese uses
HK/Taiwan/Macau/SG/MY/ID Chinese still use ganzhi in traditional contexts (ancestor commemoration, fortune-reading, date-selection). The tool helps convert ancestor birth/death dates to ganzhi (for traditional rites) and cross-reference historical document dates.
10 Facts about Ganzhi
Ganzhi has 3300+ years of history. Oracle-bone inscriptions already contain the complete 60-jiazi table — one of the world's oldest continuously-used era systems.
Six full cycles = 360 years. A 60-year lifespan is called "花甲" (flower-jiazi) because one has completed a full ganzhi cycle.
2026 = 丙午 (Fire Horse). The next 丙午 year is 2086 — 60 years away.
Ganzhi marks years, months, days, and hours. The "8 characters" of bazi are these 4 levels at birth, each contributing a stem-branch pair (= 2 chars × 4 levels).
GCD(10, 12) = 2, so the combined system needs 60 steps to return to start: 10×12÷2 = 60.
Stems map to elements: 甲乙=wood, 丙丁=fire, 戊己=earth, 庚辛=metal, 壬癸=water (each pair is yang-yin). Tool colour-codes by element.
纳音 is a separate 5-element sub-classification of the 60 jiazi — each 2 consecutive jiazi share one 纳音 (e.g. 丙午 + 丁未 are both "天河水" celestial-river water).
Branches map to 12 zodiacs (子=rat...亥=pig) and the 12 daily 2-hour blocks (子=23-1, 丑=1-3, etc.).
Vietnam, Korea, Japan all historically used ganzhi. Japan retains it in some imperial-era contexts; Vietnam still uses it folk-wise.
Tool uses the Shouxing astronomical algorithm, 99.99% match with the National Astronomical Observatory of China official tables — usable for verifying ganzhi dates in classical texts.
Frequently Asked Questions
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This tool shows year/month/day only (no hour pillar, no ten-god labels) — quick lookup. Bazi Chart (RT-CHN-001) gives the full 8-char chart + ten gods + 5-element analysis.
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Yes — tradition switches at 立春. The tool defaults to Gregorian; manual adjustment for that edge case if needed.
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A sub-classification of the 60 jiazi — each ganzhi pair gets an "image" like "海中金" sea-metal or "炉中火" furnace-fire. An extra year-pillar label in fortune-reading.
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No. Browser-local, no server calls.
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Yes. Year ganzhi for zodiac/纳音; month ganzhi for bazi + date-selection; day ganzhi for the bazi day-master + auspicious-hour selection.
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Use the full bazi tool — RT-CHN-001 (Bazi Chart) accepts exact birth hour and returns the hour pillar.
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99.99% match. Tool uses the Shouxing algorithm — same as the Purple Mountain Observatory official tables.
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Tool supports 1900-2100. Pre-1900 ganzhi needs archaeological sources — modern algorithm doesn't exactly match historical dynasty records.
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The branch part of the year ganzhi IS the zodiac — 丙午 has 午 = horse; 辛丑 has 丑 = ox.
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Year ganzhi repeats every 60 years. Same-year people share the year stem-branch, but their month/day/hour stem-branches differ by birth specifics.
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