By BabyShowerShow · Updated October 27, 2026
The Chinese gender calendar, also called the Chinese gender chart, looks up the mother's lunar age at conception and the lunar month she conceived in a traditional chart that says boy or girl. It is a folk chart of uncertain origin, not science: tested on 2,840,755 Swedish births, it did no better than tossing a coin. Enter two dates below to see what it says, just for fun.
🎈 Just for fun: this is a folk chart, not science.
It cannot tell anyone a baby's sex, and nothing on this page is medical advice. Play it as a guessing game before the reveal.
Example dates are filled in, so change them. From a due date, conception is estimated as 38 weeks earlier.
The chart says
Girl!
Just for fun. This is a folk chart, not science: across 2,840,755 Swedish births it was no better than tossing a coin (Villamor et al., 2010).
Her row of the chart (lunar age 32), lunar months 1 to 12:
Guessing before a reveal? Ask the room too: the free old wives' tales gender quiz tallies 12 more folk signs, and Old Wives' Tales: True or False? puts pregnancy folklore on the big screen for the whole party.
Runs in your browser. The dates you enter are not uploaded.
Rows are the mother's lunar age at conception (18 to 45); columns are the lunar month of conception. G is girl, B is boy. This is the version Mother & Baby publishes; other versions online differ in some cells. It says boy in 167 of its 336 cells and girl in 169.
| Age | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | G | B | G | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B |
| 19 | B | G | B | G | G | B | B | B | B | B | G | G |
| 20 | G | B | G | B | B | B | B | B | B | G | B | B |
| 21 | B | G | G | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G |
| 22 | G | B | B | B | B | G | G | B | G | G | G | G |
| 23 | B | B | G | G | B | G | B | G | B | B | B | G |
| 24 | B | G | B | B | G | B | B | G | G | G | G | G |
| 25 | G | B | B | G | G | B | G | B | B | B | B | B |
| 26 | B | G | B | B | G | B | G | B | G | G | G | G |
| 27 | G | B | G | G | G | G | B | B | B | B | G | B |
| 28 | B | G | B | B | G | G | B | B | B | B | G | G |
| 29 | G | B | G | G | B | B | B | B | B | G | G | G |
| 30 | B | G | G | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | B | B |
| 31 | B | G | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | B |
| 32 | B | G | B | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | G | B |
| 33 | G | B | G | G | G | G | G | B | G | G | G | B |
| 34 | B | G | B | B | G | G | G | G | G | G | B | B |
| 35 | B | B | G | B | G | G | G | B | G | G | B | B |
| 36 | G | B | B | G | B | G | G | G | B | B | B | B |
| 37 | B | G | B | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | G | B |
| 38 | G | B | G | G | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | G |
| 39 | B | G | B | B | B | G | G | B | G | B | G | G |
| 40 | G | B | G | B | G | B | B | G | B | G | B | G |
| 41 | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | B | G | B | G | B |
| 42 | G | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | B | G | B | G |
| 43 | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | G | B | B | B | B |
| 44 | B | B | G | B | B | B | G | B | G | B | G | G |
| 45 | G | B | B | G | G | G | B | G | B | G | B | B |
Month numbers are lunar months, not January to December. Use the calendar above to convert your dates.
No. A 2010 study ran the chart on 2,840,755 single births in Sweden between 1973 and 2006, working out each mother's lunar age and month of conception. Agreement between the chart's guess and the baby's actual sex was a kappa of 0.0002, and it did not improve for any year, age, education level, body mass index or number of earlier births. Skipping the lunar conversion, the classic mistake, made no difference either. The authors concluded the method is no better than tossing a coin (Villamor et al., 2010).
The name mixes two very different things. The calendar is a working astronomical system that still sets major holidays. The boy-or-girl chart is folklore that borrows its dates.
It is a lunisolar calendar: every month starts on the day of a new moon, and roughly once every three years a leap month is added to keep the year in step with the seasons. Its traditional form took shape between 771 and 476 BCE, and it still sets the dates of Chinese New Year, the Lantern Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival in China and in Chinese communities around the world. Today it is defined by a Chinese national standard, GB/T 33661-2017 (Chinese calendar).
Traditional age, xusui (虚岁) in Mandarin, starts at 1 at birth and goes up at each New Year rather than on a birthday. Mainland China uses ordinary birthday age for official purposes, while the traditional count lives on in horoscopes. South Korea, which used its own version, dropped it from official documents in June 2023 (East Asian age reckoning).
In Chinese the chart is usually called 清宫表 or 清宫图, the “Qing palace chart”, after a story that it was kept at the court of the Qing dynasty. Another story says it was buried in an imperial tomb about 700 years ago (The Paper), and English-language baby sites tell it as a chart found in a royal tomb near Beijing (Pampers UK). Neither story has been traced to a historical document, and the copies in circulation differ cell by cell, which is why two websites can give the same dates different answers.
A clinician writing on the contributor platform of The Paper, a Shanghai news site, says the chart has no scientific basis and that a baby's sex is settled at fertilization (The Paper). That is the same conclusion the Swedish study reached.
Guessing a baby's sex from folklore is not unique to any one culture. American and British showers already play with the ring on a string, carrying high or low and sweet-or-salty cravings, and none of them is a real test either. The old wives' tales gender quiz runs 12 of them. The Chinese chart belongs in the same spirit: a shared bit of fun before the real answer arrives.
Old Wives' Tales: True or False? puts 15 pregnancy folklore statements on a TV or a video call. Teams vote Fact or Myth, then a sourced explanation reveals on tap. The six-question demo is free; the full deck comes with a Show Pass, a one-time $9.99 for all 20 games for 30 days.
No better than chance. Researchers ran the Chinese lunar calendar method on 2,840,755 Swedish births from 1973 to 2006 and found its agreement with the real result was a kappa of 0.0002, which is coin-toss territory. Enjoy it as a party game, not a prediction.
Traditional Chinese age starts at 1 at birth and goes up by one at every Lunar New Year, not on your birthday. So lunar age at conception is the lunar year of conception minus the lunar year you were born in, plus one. It is usually one or two years more than your ordinary age, and the calendar above does the conversion for you.
The chart wants the lunar month of conception. If you only know the due date, the calendar counts back 38 weeks, because a due date sits 40 weeks after the last period and conception is assumed to happen about 2 weeks after it. That estimate can be off by a week or so, and the calendar tells you when that would flip the chart's answer.
There is no single original, so the versions online disagree in individual cells. Sites also differ in how carefully they convert dates to the lunar calendar and in how they count age and leap months, which is why the same dates can get a boy on one site and a girl on another.
Nobody has documented it. In Chinese it is usually called the Qing palace chart, after a story that it was kept at the Qing imperial court; English-language sites tell of a chart found in a royal tomb near Beijing about 700 years ago. Neither story has been traced to a historical source, so treat it as a folk chart of uncertain origin.
The Chinese calendar sometimes repeats a month, as it did with the 6th month in 2025. This calendar reads a leap month as the month it repeats, which is the common convention, though a few charts count it as the following month instead.
Last checked: October 27, 2026. The study link goes to the PubMed abstract we read. How we work is set out in how we research.