Birthdays · May

May 17 birthdayZodiac sign, famous birthdays, personality and your 2027 numbers

The short answer

May 17 is a Taurus birthday in the third decan of Taurus with birthday number 8 and a Personal Year 6 in 2027; Edward Jenner (1749), Enya (1961) and Henri Barbusse (1873) were born on May 17 too.

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May 17 zodiac sign: Taurus

Sun sign

Taurus

Sun at noon UTC

25.7° to 27.1° Taurus

Decan

Third of Taurus, 20° to 30°

Element and mode

Earth, fixed

Ruling planet

Venus

In every one of the 91 years from 1940 to 2030 the Sun stood in Taurus for the whole of May 17, in every time zone on Earth, between 25.7° and 27.1° of the sign at noon UTC, so a May 17 birthday is a Taurus birthday whatever the year or the hour.

At noon UTC on May 17 the Sun is in the third decan of Taurus, 20° to 30°, in every one of those years, a face that belongs to Saturn in the Chaldean order and is read through Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, by triplicity, so the two systems agree; in most years the decan runs from May 11 to May 20, and May 17 is its seventh day.

In most years May 17 is the 28th day of the Sun’s season in Taurus, which runs from April 20 to May 20 counted at noon UTC, with three days of it still to come. May 17 is the 137th day of a common year and the 138th of a leap year, with 228 days of the year still to come after it.

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Famous May 17 birthdays

The earliest born of the twelve is Edward Jenner, in 1749, and the most recent Tony Parker, in 1982; five of them were born after 1949.

Born since 1950

• Enya (born 1961), Irish singer
• Bob Saget (1956–2022), American stand-up comedian
• Bill Paxton (1955–2017), American actor and filmmaker
• Queen Máxima of the Netherlands (born 1971), queen consort of the Netherlands
• Tony Parker (born 1982), French basketball player

Born from 1900 to 1949

• Dennis Hopper (1936–2010), American actor and film director
• Birgit Nilsson (1918–2005), Swedish opera singer

Born in the 1800s

• Henri Barbusse (1873–1935), French author
• Erik Satie (1866–1925), French composer and pianist
• Alfonso XIII (1886–1941), King of Spain from 1886 to 1931
• Odd Hassel (1897–1981), Norwegian physical chemist and Nobel Laureate

Born before 1800

• Edward Jenner (1749–1823), English physician, scientist and pioneer of vaccination

Birthdays from Wikidata, checked against Wikipedia’s “On this day” births: the twelve best known of the 60 people the Almanac’s table keeps for May 17, by how many Wikipedia editions cover them, with dates before the calendar reform as the sources give them.

May 17 birthday personality

Both systems hand the last decan of Taurus to Saturn, so the old reading is patience in its slowest and surest form, things built to outlast their builder. It is the decan of the long apprenticeship, and the question it carries is whether endurance has left room for delight.

The 17th carries the 1 of a beginning and the 7 of reflection and adds them into 8, so numerology reads it as thought that turns into authority. It is a birthday linked with good judgement and long effort. Read through earth, the 8 is patient prosperity, built slowly, guarded well and shared once it is secure.

A question to carry from May 17: what responsibility is your patience ready to take on, and what is it ready to hand over?

The Sun in Taurus and the number 8 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 8

Born on the 17th, 1 + 7 = 8, so your birthday number is 8: an 8 vibration supports power, ambition, money, mastery, and authority, with mastery, stewardship, and executive force as its gift and pressure, material fixation, or control issues as its strain.

Your 2027 numbers

For a birthday on May 17 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: May, the 5th month, gives 5, the 17th reduces to 8, and 5 + 8 + 11 = 24, which reduces to 6, so 2027 is your Personal Year 6.

A Personal Year 6 is read as a year of love and duty, of home, family and the people who rely on you. In 2027, a Universal Year 11, the tradition reads that care as reaching out to heal and to serve a community.

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

In 2027 May 17 falls on a Monday, the day the old reckoning gives to the Moon, and is a Personal Day 1 (11 + 17 = 28, then 1) in a Personal Month 11 (6 + 5 = 11), while May is a master month 11; the Personal Year itself turns on 1 January, not on the birthday.

May birthstone and birth flower

Birthstone

Emerald

Birth flowers

Lily of the valley, and hawthorn as the second flower

May’s emerald comes from the modern list (the Jewelers of America list of 1912, as since revised), and its lily of the valley and hawthorn from The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

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