Birthdays · May

May 21 birthdayZodiac sign, famous birthdays, personality and your 2027 numbers

The short answer

May 21 is a cusp birthday, usually Gemini; in some years the Sun is still in Taurus for part of this date, so check your birth year and time, with birthday number 3 and a Personal Year 1 in 2027; Albrecht Dürer (1471), Philip II of Spain (1527) and Mario Mandžukić (1986) were born on May 21 too.

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May 21 zodiac sign: Taurus or Gemini

Sun sign

Taurus or Gemini, a cusp day

Sun at noon UTC

0.0° to 1.0° Gemini, or 29.6° to 30.0° Taurus

Decan

First of Gemini, 0° to 10°

Element and mode

Air, mutable

Ruling planet

Mercury

May 21 is a cusp birthday, usually Gemini; in some years the Sun is still in Taurus for part of this date, so check your birth year and time: in 67 of the 91 years from 1940 to 2030 the Sun crossed from Taurus into Gemini during May 21 counted in UTC, most recently in 2027, and at noon UTC it stood in Gemini in 70 of the years and in Taurus in 21. For a birth on May 21 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 May 21 the Sun is in the first decan of Gemini in 70 of those years and in the third decan of Taurus in 21, so the decan, like the sign at a cusp, turns on the year. The first decan of Gemini is a face that belongs to Jupiter in the Chaldean order and is read through Gemini, ruled by Mercury, by triplicity, and in most years the decan runs from May 21 to May 31, and May 21 is its first day.

In most years May 21 is the 1st day of the Sun’s season in Gemini, which runs from May 21 to June 21 counted at noon UTC, with 31 days of it still to come. May 21 is the 141st day of a common year and the 142nd of a leap year, with 224 days of the year still to come after it.

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Famous May 21 birthdays

The earliest born of the twelve is Albrecht Dürer, in 1471, and the most recent Mario Mandžukić, in 1986; two of them were born after 1949.

Born since 1950

• Mario Mandžukić (born 1986), Croatian association football player
• The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997), American rapper

Born from 1900 to 1949

• Romain Gary (1914–1980), French writer and diplomat
• Günter Blobel (1936–2018), German American biologist

Born in the 1800s

• Willem Einthoven (1860–1927), Dutch physiologist
• Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), French painter
• Charles Albert Gobat (1843–1914), Swiss politician and lawyer
• Louis Renault (1843–1918), French jurist

Born before 1800

• Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), German painter, printmaker, mathematician, and theorist
• Philip II of Spain (1527–1598), King of Spain, Portugal, Naples and Sicily
• Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis (1792–1843), French mathematician, mechanical engineer, and scientist
• Mary Anning (1799–1847), British fossil collector and palaeontologist

Birthdays from Wikidata, checked against Wikipedia’s “On this day” births: the twelve best known of the 72 people the Almanac’s table keeps for May 21, by how many Wikipedia editions cover them, with dates before the calendar reform as the sources give them.

May 21 birthday personality

Jupiter opens Gemini in the Chaldean order and Mercury keeps it by triplicity, so a birthday here is read as curiosity with an appetite for meaning, the student who wants the whole library. The tradition’s warning is a breadth that never settles long enough to become knowledge.

Born on the 21st, 2 and 1 add to 3: partnership and initiative turning into expression. Numerology reads it as a sociable, creative birthday, the host who is also the entertainer. The tradition reads air with a 3 as the communicator’s pairing, whose talk is best when it builds a bridge rather than a stage.

Where Taurus gives way to Gemini the settled hand meets the quick mind, comfort meeting curiosity. 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 May 21: what would your curiosity make if it set aside the fear of how it will be received?

The Sun in Gemini and the number 3 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 3

Born on the 21st, 2 + 1 = 3, so your birthday number is 3: a 3 vibration supports creativity, communication, joy, and expressive movement, with creative communication as its gift and scattered focus, avoidance, or emotional dramatization as its strain.

Your 2027 numbers

For a birthday on May 21 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 21st reduces to 3, and 5 + 3 + 11 = 19, which reduces to 1, so 2027 is your Personal Year 1. On the way it passes 19, a karmic debt number, read in a year as a lesson to work through rather than as bad luck.

A Personal Year 1 is read as the start of a new nine-year round: a year to choose a direction and take the first real step toward it. In 2027 the Universal Year 11 is read as asking that the new start follow an honest intuition, then be tested in practice.

Personal Months of 2027, a Personal Year 1: Jan 2 Feb 3 Mar 4 Apr 5 May 6 Jun 7 Jul 8 Aug 9 Sep 1 Oct 11 Nov 3 Dec 4

In 2027 May 21 falls on a Friday, the day the old reckoning gives to Venus, and is a Personal Day 9 (6 + 21 = 27, then 9) in a Personal Month 6 (1 + 5 = 6), while October 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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