Birthdays · May

May 23 birthdayZodiac sign, famous birthdays, personality and your 2027 numbers

The short answer

May 23 is a Gemini birthday in the first decan of Gemini with birthday number 5 and a Personal Year 3 in 2027; Carl Linnaeus (1707), John Bardeen (1908) and Pär Lagerkvist (1891) were born on May 23 too.

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May 23 zodiac sign: Gemini

Sun sign

Gemini

Sun at noon UTC

1.5° to 2.9° Gemini

Decan

First of Gemini, 0° to 10°

Element and mode

Air, mutable

Ruling planet

Mercury

In every one of the 91 years from 1940 to 2030 the Sun stood in Gemini for the whole of May 23, in every time zone on Earth, between 1.5° and 2.9° of the sign at noon UTC, so a May 23 birthday is a Gemini birthday whatever the year or the hour.

At noon UTC on May 23 the Sun is in the first decan of Gemini, 0° to 10°, in every one of those years, a face that belongs to Jupiter in the Chaldean order and is read through Gemini, ruled by Mercury, by triplicity; in most years the decan runs from May 21 to May 31, and May 23 is its third day.

In most years May 23 is the 3rd day of the Sun’s season in Gemini, which runs from May 21 to June 21 counted at noon UTC, with 29 days of it still to come. May 23 is the 143rd day of a common year and the 144th of a leap year, with 222 days of the year still to come after it.

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Famous May 23 birthdays

The earliest born of the twelve is Philip I of France, in 1052, and the most recent Lena Meyer-Landrut, in 1991; three of them were born after 1949.

Born since 1950

• Lena Meyer-Landrut (born 1991), German singer
• Rubens Barrichello (born 1972), Brazilian racing driver
• Daniele Massaro (born 1961), Italian association football player

Born from 1900 to 1949

• John Bardeen (1908–1991), American physicist and engineer
• Joan Collins (born 1933), English actress, author and columnist
• Joshua Lederberg (1925–2008), American molecular biologist

Born in the 1800s

• Pär Lagerkvist (1891–1974), Swedish writer
• Otto Lilienthal (1848–1896), German aviation pioneer
• Douglas Fairbanks (1883–1939), American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer
• Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), American writer and women's activist

Born before 1800

• Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist
• Philip I of France (1052–1108), king of the Franks from 1060 to 1108

Birthdays from Wikidata, checked against Wikipedia’s “On this day” births: the twelve best known of the 76 people the Almanac’s table keeps for May 23, by how many Wikipedia editions cover them, with dates before the calendar reform as the sources give them.

May 23 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.

The 23rd adds 2 and 3 into 5, so numerology reads it as a lively, curious birthday, the partner and the talker becoming the traveller. It is linked with versatility and a quick wit. In an air sign the 5 is read as the eternal student, with a thirst for news, travel and the next good question.

A question to carry from May 23: which routine is your curiosity ready to change, and which one is worth keeping?

The Sun in Gemini and the number 5 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 5

Born on the 23rd, 2 + 3 = 5, so your birthday number is 5: a 5 vibration supports freedom, change, movement, curiosity, and experimentation, with adaptability and discovery as its gift and restlessness, inconsistency, or escapism as its strain.

Your 2027 numbers

For a birthday on May 23 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 23rd reduces to 5, and 5 + 5 + 11 = 21, which reduces to 3, so 2027 is your Personal Year 3.

A Personal Year 3 is read as a year of expression, friendship and creative play, when what you make and say carries further than usual. Under the Universal Year 11 the reading adds inspiration, with the caution to finish what the bright ideas begin.

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

In 2027 May 23 falls on a Sunday, the day the old reckoning gives to the Sun, and is a Personal Day 4 (8 + 23 = 31, then 4) in a Personal Month 8 (3 + 5 = 8), while August 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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