Chinese Gender Predictor — Baby Gender Chart (For Fun)

Chinese gender predictor: the folk chart, read properly

This Chinese gender predictor reads the traditional “Chinese birth chart” (清宫生男生女表), which claims to tell a boy from a girl using two numbers: the mother’s Chinese lunar age at conception and the Chinese lunar month in which conception happened. It is a folk tradition for fun, with no scientific basis — treat the answer like a coin toss at a baby shower, not a prediction.

Most online versions of this baby gender predictor skip the hard part and use your ordinary age and the Western month. This one converts both properly with the Hong Kong Observatory lunar tables: your lunar age (虚岁) counts from one at birth and goes up at each Chinese New Year, and the month is the lunar month, which starts at a new moon. You can start from the conception date, from the due date, or read the chart directly if you already know your lunar age and month.

How to use the Chinese gender chart

1. Choose Conception date, Due date or Lunar age & month.
2. Enter the mother’s date of birth (Gregorian) and the conception date — or the due date, and the tool takes conception as 266 days earlier.
3. Read the chart’s answer, the lunar age and lunar month it used, and how they were worked out.
4. Look at the full chart below: your cell is outlined. If conception was near the start or end of a lunar month, a note shows what the neighbouring month would say.

Chinese Gender Predictor features

Does the Chinese gender chart work?

No. Researchers from the University of Michigan and the Karolinska Institute checked the chart against 2,840,755 births in Sweden between 1973 and 2006, using the mother’s lunar age and the lunar month of conception. Agreement with the real sex of the baby was no better than chance (kappa 0.0002); it was right about half the time, exactly like tossing a coin (Villamor, Dekker, Svensson and Cnattingius, Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, 2010;24:398–400). Claims of 90% accuracy come from people remembering the hits.

The legend says the chart was found in a royal tomb near Beijing 700 years ago, or kept in the Qing palace; neither story is documented. Copies online also disagree in a few cells. This tool uses the version printed in Chinese 清宫表 tables, which matches most text copies (checked 24 October 2026).

How lunar age and lunar month are worked out

Lunar age = lunar year of conception − lunar year of the mother’s birth + 1. A woman born on 10 May 1996 who conceives on 1 October 2026 is 30 by her birthday but 31 in lunar age. If she was born in January or early February before Chinese New Year, her lunar birth year is the previous one, which adds another year. Some charts and apps use a simpler “age + 1”, which is why versions disagree for some people. The lunar age calculator explains this in detail.

Lunar month: 1 October 2026 is day 21 of the 8th lunar month, so the chart is read at row 31, column 8 — a girl. Lunar months start with a new moon and run 29 or 30 days, so they do not line up with Western months.

Ways that actually tell you the sex

• A non-invasive prenatal test (NIPT), a blood test that can report sex chromosomes, is offered from about 10 weeks in many countries.
• The mid-pregnancy anomaly scan, at about 18–22 weeks, can often show the sex if the hospital’s policy allows telling you. In India, telling parents the sex of a fetus is illegal under the PCPNDT Act.
• To work out when conception happened, use the conception calculator.