Name the calendar before naming the year
HKO uses the first day of the first Chinese calendar month to change the official Gan-Zhi year. Its account distinguishes this from fortune-telling traditions that use Spring Commences, or Li Chun, instead.
The phrase Lunar New Year can refer to different cultural calendars and observances. This learning page explains the modern Chinese reference used by the Atlas tool; it does not assign one festival date to every tradition.
Worked example · the boundaries separate in February 2024
HKO’s February 2024 almanac places Spring Commences on 4 February and the first day of lunar month one on 10 February. On 5 February, the Chinese lunar-year label remains Gui-Mao, Rabbit, while Atlas’s Li Chun convention has entered Jia-Chen, Dragon.
This is an explicit comparison of year-boundary conventions, not an error to remove by silently replacing one label. Near the actual Li Chun instant, a date alone is insufficient to determine which side of that instant a birth occurred.
HKO · February 2024 almanac, year and solar-term boundaries ↗
Choose a reference that answers your question
For a Chinese calendar date record, inspect the lunar-year result under the intended date reference. For a method specifying Li Chun, inspect that solar-year row and its instant receipt. In either case keep the complete stem–branch pair, not just the animal label.
If you compare a recorded local date with the China date at the same instant, midnight can also change the answer. The lunisolar-calendar guide works through that second kind of difference. Saved reports keep the reference selected when they were created.
A calendar label is one input to interpretation
The comparison report explains the rule that produced each year label. It does not turn the animal into a personality verdict, decide compatibility, or substitute for a complete Four Pillars reading. A tradition using the calendar label must supply its own attributed interpretive rules.
When reading a family record or another service, ask which calendar and boundary the label means. Matching names without matching that convention can conceal different questions.
Word origin · etymology
Descriptive English compound; lunar derives from Latin lunaris, from luna (Moon).
New Year names the beginning of a calendar year. Lunar specifies its connection with a Moon-based calendar; Chinese calendar rules also use the solar year, so lunisolar is the more complete calendar description.
Merriam-Webster · lunar ↗Hong Kong Observatory · What year is it today? (Hui Tai-wai, April 2018) ↗
How we know · epistemology
Named civil-calendar boundary
This entry describes the modern Chinese convention. Other cultures have their own calendars and new-year observances. The first lunar month boundary and the Li Chun solar-term instant can fall on different dates.
Hong Kong Observatory · What year is it today? (Hui Tai-wai, April 2018) ↗
Explore it in your atlas
Connected concepts
Read alongside this entry
Terms used in this explanation
Mentioned in 2 other entries
These links connect subjects and terminology. They do not establish a shared historical origin.
Sources & provenance
Use the citations beside each section to distinguish a calculation convention, a historical teaching and an editorial example.