Auspicious Destiny

How the four pillars are derived

The year pillar turns over at lichun, the start of spring — not at New Year's Day and not at Lunar New Year. The month pillar is divided by solar terms, each month beginning at a jie. The day pillar runs continuously through the sixty-term cycle. The hour pillar is read from the day stem against the hour branch. Of the four, the hour is where errors happen: the longitude offset from Beijing time plus the equation of time gives True Solar Time, and an hour of error can change the whole pillar. That is why the birthplace is not optional.

The nayin row and the zodiac receipt

The nayin row gives the nayin name of each pillar. The year-pillar cell matters most: it fixes the year fate of folk usage, such as gold in the sea for the jia-zi and yi-chou years, or heavenly river water for bing-wu and ding-wei. Nayin is assigned in pairs across the sixty-year cycle, thirty entries in all, and comes from a table — it cannot be derived from the stem and branch alone.

Directly beneath the chart sits the zodiac receipt, setting out four rows: the year pillar, the stem element, the nayin and the folk name. The reason is simple — the stem element and the nayin are not the same thing. The stem element follows the ten heavenly stems (jia and yi wood, bing and ding fire, and so on), which is where labels like fire horse and metal tiger come from. Nayin is a separate system. A geng-yin year shows the problem plainly: the stem geng is metal, so it is a metal tiger, but the nayin is pine and cypress wood, and the two labels contradict each other. Listing them apart is meant to stop anyone collapsing them into one sentence.

The year pillar changes at lichun, while the folk zodiac changes at Lunar New Year's Day. Anyone born between the two dates already has a new year pillar while the folk zodiac still counts the old year; this page flags that case in the receipt and gives the result under both conventions. The full year-by-year table is in the sixty-year cycle table (in Chinese); its folk-name column is popular usage with no standard text, and is there for reference only.

Element distribution and strength

The element distribution counts how often each of the five elements appears across the stems and branches of the four pillars, including the hidden stems inside branches. That gives a rough idea of quantity. Judging strength needs more: whether the birth month is in season for that element, whether the branches give it a root, whether the stems support it. Three wood is a different thing in spring and in autumn.

What the favourable element is

The favourable element is the one or two elements that bring the whole chart toward balance. Judging it means weighing the strength of the day master, the climate of the month and how the chart circulates as a whole — not just counting. This is exactly where add whatever is missing goes wrong: if the missing element is in fact an unfavourable one, adding it pushes the chart further out of balance.

Using the chart for naming

Once you have the favourable element, go back to the name generator, which filters characters along that direction. Or run an existing name through the name checker to see where its elements fall. Chart calculation belongs to traditional culture; what this site produces is the output of rules, offered as reference.