Birthdays · January

January 1 birthdayZodiac sign, famous birthdays, personality and your 2027 numbers

The short answer

January 1 is a Capricorn birthday in the second decan of Capricorn with birthday number 1 and a Personal Year 4 in 2027; J. D. Salinger (1919), Pierre de Coubertin (1863) and Pope Alexander VI (1431) were born on January 1 too.

Get my personal reading

$0 today, then $12/month after 7 days. Cancel anytime.

Born on January 1? Add your birth year

See your exact Life Path, your 2027 year and your Road.

January 1 zodiac sign: Capricorn

Sun sign: Capricorn
Sun at noon UTC: 9.9° to 11.4° Capricorn
Decan: Second of Capricorn, 10° to 20°
Element and mode: Earth, cardinal
Ruling planet: Saturn

In every one of the 91 years from 1940 to 2030 the Sun stood in Capricorn for the whole of January 1, in every time zone on Earth, between 9.9° and 11.4° of the sign at noon UTC, so a January 1 birthday is a Capricorn birthday whatever the year or the hour.

At noon UTC on January 1 the Sun is in the second decan of Capricorn in 88 of those years and in the first in 3, so the decan, like the sign at a cusp, turns on the year. The second decan of Capricorn is a face that belongs to Mars in the Chaldean order and is read through Taurus, ruled by Venus, by triplicity, and in most years the decan runs from January 1 to January 10, and January 1 is its first day.

In most years January 1 is the 11th day of the Sun’s season in Capricorn, which runs from December 22 to January 19 counted at noon UTC, with 18 days of it still to come. January 1 is the 1st day of every year, with 364 days of the year still to come, or 365 in a leap year.

From the reference page to your own chart

What does your own chart say about you?

Choose love, work or purpose. Your reading is written from your chart. Your reading uses your own birth details.

Get my personal reading $0 today, then $12/month after 7 days. Cancel anytime.

Walk through Alex’s whole example first

The Road of AgesSee the turning points of your whole life, from your birth date See your road's shape

Prefer to explore first?

Member tools The 2026 book Lectures

The daily letter, free

One short letter at 7 each morning: the day’s theme read for your own chart.

The Road of AgesThe turning points of your whole life, from your own chart Walk my road

Free, by email

Your daily Almanac letter

One short letter at 7 each morning: the day’s theme read for your own chart, and one thing to do with it.

Famous January 1 birthdays

The earliest born of the twelve is Pope Alexander VI, in 1431, and the most recent Lilian Thuram, in 1972; two of them were born after 1949.

Born since 1950

Lilian Thuram (born 1972), French footballer
Davor Šuker (born 1968), Croatian footballer

Born from 1900 to 1949

J. D. Salinger (1919–2010), American author

Born in the 1800s

Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937), founder of modern Olympic Games, pedagogue and historian
Sándor Petőfi (1823–1849), Hungarian poet and liberal revolutionary
E. M. Forster (1879–1970), English novelist
Satyendra Nath Bose (1894–1974), Indian Bengali physicist and polymath
James George Frazer (1854–1941), Scottish social anthropologist
J. Edgar Hoover (1895–1972), American law enforcement administrator

Born before 1800

Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503), pope of the Catholic Church 1492–1503 from the Borgia family
Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), Protestant Reformation leader in Switzerland
Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492), Italian politician, literary man and humanist

Birthdays from Wikidata, checked against Wikipedia’s “On this day” births: the twelve best known of the 86 people the Almanac’s table keeps for January 1, by how many Wikipedia editions cover them, with dates before the calendar reform as the sources give them.

January 1 birthday personality

Mars, exalted in Capricorn, takes its middle decan in the Chaldean scheme while Taurus lends Venus’s steadiness, so tradition reads drive with stamina here, the climber who paces the mountain. Its caution is work that crowds out the people it was meant for.

Born on the 1st, you carry the number in its plainest form, with no compound behind it, only the 1 of beginnings. Numerologists read the first of the month as the self-starter, someone who would rather go first than wait to be asked. In an earth sign the 1’s independence is read as self-reliance, the person who would rather build it themselves than wait to be helped.

A question to carry from January 1: where could your discipline make the first move you have been waiting for someone else to make?

The Sun in Capricorn and the number 1 are only part of the story: your Moon, your rising sign and the rest of your chart have as much to say, and the tradition offers all this as a mirror, never a verdict.

Birthday number 1

Born on the 1st, your birthday number is simply 1, the day itself: a 1 vibration supports initiative, courage, leadership, and clear beginnings, with initiative and self-direction as its gift and impatience, isolation, or ego pressure as its strain.

Your 2027 numbers

Pythagoras with a small lyre, pointing to a triangle of ten pebbles in his palm, an engraving — Pythagoras, the philosopher of number

For a birthday on January 1 the house method reduces the birth month and the day on their own and adds the Universal Year of 2027, 11 (2 + 0 + 2 + 7 = 11, a master number kept whole), as it stands: January, the 1st month, gives 1, the 1st gives 1, and 1 + 1 + 11 = 13, which reduces to 4, so 2027 is your Personal Year 4. On the way it passes 13, a karmic debt number, read in a year as a lesson to work through rather than as bad luck.

A Personal Year 4 is read as a year of foundations: work, routine, health and the slow building that pays later. In a Universal Year 11 the tradition reads it as the year to give a vision its scaffolding.

Personal Months of 2027, a Personal Year 4: Jan 5 Feb 6 Mar 7 Apr 8 May 9 Jun 1 Jul 11 Aug 3 Sep 4 Oct 5 Nov 6 Dec 7

In 2027 January 1 falls on a Friday, the day the old reckoning gives to Venus, and is a Personal Day 6 (5 + 1 = 6) in a Personal Month 5 (4 + 1 = 5), while July is a master month 11; the Personal Year itself turns on 1 January, not on the birthday.

January birthstone and birth flower

Birthstone: Garnet
Birth flowers: Carnation, and snowdrop as the second flower

January’s garnet comes from the modern list (the Jewelers of America list of 1912, as since revised), and its carnation and snowdrop from The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

More birthdays

Common questions

What zodiac sign is January 1?

Capricorn: from 1940 to 2030 the Sun stayed in Capricorn for the whole of January 1 in every year and every time zone, 9.9° to 11.4° into the sign at noon UTC, so no birth year or birth time changes it.

Is January 1 a cusp birthday?

No: the Sun stays in Capricorn all day on January 1 in every year from 1940 to 2030, wherever on Earth the birth takes place, and the nearest cusp birthday is December 22, ten days earlier.

Who was born on January 1?

Among the best known people born on January 1 are J. D. Salinger (1919–2010), Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937) and Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503), with Sándor Petőfi, Huldrych Zwingli and E. M. Forster and six more named on this page.

What is the birthday number for January 1?

1. Born on the 1st, your birthday number is simply 1, the day itself: a 1 vibration supports initiative, courage, leadership, and clear beginnings, with initiative and self-direction as its gift and impatience, isolation, or ego pressure as its strain.

What is the 2027 Personal Year for a January 1 birthday?

4. For a birthday on January 1 the house method reduces the birth month and the day on their own and adds the Universal Year of 2027, 11 (2 + 0 + 2 + 7 = 11, a master number kept whole), as it stands: January, the 1st month, gives 1, the 1st gives 1, and 1 + 1 + 11 = 13, which reduces to 4, so 2027 is your Personal Year 4. On the way it passes 13, a karmic debt number, read in a year as a lesson to work through rather than as bad luck.