Birthdays · January

January 20 birthdayZodiac sign, famous birthdays, personality and your 2027 numbers

The short answer

January 20 is a cusp birthday, usually Aquarius; in some years the Sun is still in Capricorn for part of this date, so check your birth year and time, with birthday number 2 and a Personal Year 5 in 2027; Federico Fellini (1920), André-Marie Ampère (1775) and Buzz Aldrin (1930) were born on January 20 too.

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January 20 zodiac sign: Capricorn or Aquarius

Sun sign

Capricorn or Aquarius, a cusp day

Sun at noon UTC

0.0° to 0.7° Aquarius, or 29.3° to 30.0° Capricorn

Decan

First of Aquarius, 0° to 10°

Element and mode

Air, fixed

Ruling planet

Uranus; Saturn by tradition

January 20 is a cusp birthday, usually Aquarius; in some years the Sun is still in Capricorn for part of this date, so check your birth year and time: in 77 of the 91 years from 1940 to 2030 the Sun crossed from Capricorn into Aquarius during January 20 counted in UTC, most recently in 2030, and at noon UTC it stood in Aquarius in 46 of the years and in Capricorn in 45. For a birth on January 20 the year, the time and the place settle the sign: convert the time of birth to UTC and compare it with the minute the Sun changed sign that year, or let the zodiac sign calculator do it from your date, time and city.

At noon UTC on January 20 the Sun is in the first decan of Aquarius in 46 of those years and in the third decan of Capricorn in 45, so the decan, like the sign at a cusp, turns on the year. The first decan of Aquarius is a face that belongs to Venus in the Chaldean order and is read through Aquarius, ruled by Saturn, by triplicity, and in most years the decan runs from January 20 to January 29, and January 20 is its first day.

In most years January 20 is the 1st day of the Sun’s season in Aquarius, which runs from January 20 to February 18 counted at noon UTC, with 29 days of it still to come. January 20 is the 20th day of every year, with 345 days of the year still to come, or 346 in a leap year.

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Famous January 20 birthdays

The earliest born of the twelve is Gordian III, in 225, and the most recent Owen Hargreaves, in 1981; one of them was born after 1949.

Born since 1950

• Owen Hargreaves (born 1981), English association football player

Born from 1900 to 1949

• Federico Fellini (1920–1993), Italian filmmaker
• Buzz Aldrin (born 1930), American astronaut
• David Lynch (1946–2025), American filmmaker
• Patricia Neal (1926–2010), American stage and film actress
• David Lee (born 1931), American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate

Born in the 1800s

• Johannes V. Jensen (1873–1950), Danish author

Born before 1800

• André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836), French physicist and mathematician
• Charles III of Spain (1716–1788), King of Spain from 1759 to 1788
• Gordian III (225–244), Roman emperor
• Alp Arslan (1029–1072), second sultan of the Seljuk Empire
• Sebastian, King of Portugal (1554–1578), King of Portugal from 1557 to 1578

Birthdays from Wikidata, checked against Wikipedia’s “On this day” births: the twelve best known of the 59 people the Almanac’s table keeps for January 20, by how many Wikipedia editions cover them, with dates before the calendar reform as the sources give them.

January 20 birthday personality

Venus opens Aquarius in the Chaldean scheme while Saturn, its traditional ruler, keeps it by triplicity, so the water-bearer’s ideals are read here through friendship: the circle, the cause shared over a meal. Tradition warns that a love for people in general can overlook the person in front of you.

The 20th is the 2 with a zero beside it, read in numerology as the partner’s number amplified: patience, tact and a gift for the long collaboration. In an air sign the 2 is read as the diplomat’s gift, finding the words that let two people meet halfway.

Where Capricorn gives way to Aquarius tradition meets reform, the keeper of the rules meeting the one who would rewrite them. Some readers take a birthday this close to the change to carry something of both signs, a symbolic reading the calculation cannot measure; which sign the Sun was in at a birth is a matter of fact, settled by the year, the time and the place.

A question to carry from January 20: where would your independence of mind grow stronger if it asked for help instead of carrying everything alone?

The Sun in Aquarius and the number 2 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 2

Born on the 20th, 2 + 0 = 2, so your birthday number is 2: a 2 vibration supports sensitivity, partnership, diplomacy, and careful listening, with relational intelligence and patience as its gift and over-dependence, passivity, or people-pleasing as its strain.

Your 2027 numbers

For a birthday on January 20 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 20th reduces to 2, and 1 + 2 + 11 = 14, which reduces to 5, so 2027 is your Personal Year 5. On the way it passes 14, a karmic debt number, read in a year as a lesson to work through rather than as bad luck.

Numerology reads a Personal Year 5 as a lively year of change, movement and new experience. Under the Universal Year 11 the reading favours the changes that follow an honest sense of direction.

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

In 2027 January 20 falls on a Wednesday, the day the old reckoning gives to Mercury, and is a Personal Day 8 (6 + 20 = 26, then 8) in a Personal Month 6 (5 + 1 = 6), while June 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.

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