Why Is the Year of the Goat Called Unlucky?
Yes — there is a real and stubborn Chinese superstition that people born in a Goat year, and women above all, are destined for a hard life and a bad marriage. A much-quoted saying, 十羊九不全 (literally, “of ten Goats, nine are incomplete”), expresses the folk idea that Goat-year lives are somehow lacking or difficult. It is a proverb, not a statistical claim, and this page did not find a classical Four Pillars rule that makes Goat-year births inherently unlucky.
What is genuinely interesting is where the belief came from. The story commonly told in English — that it was invented in the late Qing to smear the Goat-born Empress Dowager Cixi — is almost certainly wrong. Chinese researchers who have followed the paper trail find the prejudice is older than Cixi; one folklore study even argues it did not begin as a zodiac idea at all, but as a misread facial omen. For a symbol as auspicious as the goat, that reading would make the prejudice a long accident of misinterpretation. This article follows that trail.
What the superstition actually claims
The belief is carried largely in folk sayings, and they single out women. Alongside 十羊九不全 you will also hear 女子属羊守空房 (“a Goat-year woman keeps an empty room,” i.e. is widowed or left alone) and blunter rhymes claiming a Goat-year wife will 克夫 — bring ruin to her husband. A common modern shorthand is simply: do not let your son marry a woman born in a Goat year.
Read as folklore, these are sayings people repeat. Read as a claim about reality, they fall apart immediately: people born in the same Goat year plainly do not share one life outcome. They are presented here as a tradition that is still circulated and still disputed — not as guidance, and certainly not as a judgement about any real person.
The origin story you will usually hear — and why it is probably wrong
Two political origin stories circulate widely. One says the “Goat year is unlucky” idea was spread by revolutionaries in the late Qing to undermine the dynasty, because the Empress Dowager Cixi (born 1835, a Goat) and several powerful officials around her were also Goats. The other pins it on Yuan Shikai, the Goat-born general who declared himself emperor and was widely hated.
Both are tidy, and both are hard to sustain, because the prejudice is documented well before either figure mattered. In his widely-read essay on the subject, the writer Ma Boyong (马伯庸) assembled the earlier references; the folklore scholar Liu Ruiming (刘瑞明) traced the deeper root. Their work points the same way: the Cixi and Yuan Shikai stories are later rationalisations attached to a belief that was already old.
How far the documented trail currently reaches: back to the Ming
Following the citations Ma Boyong collected, the prejudice can be tracked backwards step by step, and it keeps going past the Qing into the Ming dynasty:
- Republican era. In 1920, Lu Xun’s younger brother Zhou Jianren wrote in New Youth (新青年) that in Shaoxing a Goat-year woman was thought to be born a widow. He mentioned it because the family had lived it: when Lu Xun was a teenager, his mother called off a prospective match on learning the girl was born in a Goat year. English reporting on the superstition tells the same story.
- Qing dynasty. The early-19th-century novel Flowers in the Mirror (镜花缘) records the saying that “in the north a Goat-year woman is thought poor, in the south a Tiger-year woman is thought fierce.” A Suzhou official’s notebook from the same period reports that local Goat-year women 捏改年岁 — falsified their ages — just to be able to marry. In 1883, a Goat year, the Shanghai newspaper Shen Bao (申报) warned that the drowning of baby girls would worsen that year because families did not want a Goat-year daughter.
- Ming dynasty. The trail does not stop in the Qing. A Ming-era almanac, the 耳目日书, already carried “a Goat-year woman keeps an empty room,” and the Ming-life novel Jin Ping Mei (金瓶梅) treats being “made to be born a Goat” as a punishment. Earlier than the Ming, surviving evidence for it is much harder to find.
In Ma Boyong’s reconstruction, the surviving references he assembled can be followed back at least to Ming-period material. That establishes the prejudice predates the late-Qing Cixi and Yuan Shikai stories; it does not by itself prove the belief first originated in the Ming. What is clear is that it hardens through the Qing and was still steering real marriages a century ago.
One proposed deeper origin: Liu Ruiming’s physiognomy theory
Folklore scholar Liu Ruiming proposes that the Goat-year prejudice grew through a series of reinterpretations of older physiognomic language, rather than out of astrology. In the Han-dynasty Qianfu Lun (潜夫论) the phrase 四白 — “four whites,” an eye with a small iris ringed by white above, below, and on both sides — already marks an ominous face, but it is not about women or the Goat zodiac.
By the Tang, the collection Chaoye Qianzai (朝野佥载) records 妇人目有四白，五夫守宅 — “a woman whose eyes show four whites, five husbands guard the house” — moving the phrase into a reading of women and marriage. Liu argues that later wordplay and reinterpretation helped transfer this facial omen onto goat symbolism and eventually onto Goat-year women. This is a scholar’s reconstruction of the genealogy, not a continuously documented chain that shows exactly when each step happened.
A similar taboo also appears in Japan
Tanizaki Junichiro’s 1940s novel The Makioka Sisters (细雪) records a similar prejudice around Osaka, especially among merchant families, against marrying a woman born in a Goat (Ram) year. This shows the taboo was not confined to China. The novel itself does not establish when, how, or in which direction the belief was transmitted — only that a close parallel existed in Japan too.
The irony: the goat also carries strong auspicious symbolism
What makes the stigma strange is that, outside this one superstition, the goat or sheep carries strong auspicious associations. The Shuowen Jiezi glosses 羊 itself as 祥 (“auspicious”), analyses 美 (“beautiful”) as 从羊从大 (“from sheep, from big”), and treats 羊 as the phonetic element in 祥; the New-Year blessing 三阳开泰 puns on 羊, which sounds the same as 阳. The Han philosopher Dong Zhongshu, in the Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals (春秋繁露), even read the lamb as a model of benevolence, righteousness, and propriety because it kneels to nurse.
This page did not identify a classical Four Pillars rule that treats Goat-year births as inherently unlucky. In the Four Pillars system a person is read from eight characters — a heavenly stem and an earthly branch for each of the year, month, day, and hour — and a zodiac animal is only the earthly branch of the year pillar, one of those eight characters considered together. Judging a whole life from that single character is not scepticism’s complaint; it is a complaint the tradition’s own logic makes.
The real cost of a “harmless” superstition
It is tempting to file this under quaint custom, but the record shows documented social consequences, even if the evidence differs in strength. An 1883 Shen Bao notice, as quoted in later research, warned that Goat-year prejudice could worsen the drowning of baby girls — evidence of contemporary concern, not a measured count of Goat-related infanticide. Other sources describe Goat-year women falsifying their ages to improve their marriage chances, and the Lu Xun family story records an intended match rejected over the woman’s Goat year. Treating the “Goat-year bride is bad luck” line as colourful folklore skips over the fact that, for generations, it was a reason real families gave for real decisions about real girls.
That is the honest reason to pull the belief apart rather than repeat it: not to score a point against old China, but because the people it still touches are alive now.
What about today — and is any of it true?
The belief has not fully gone. In the run-up to recent Goat years, Chinese reporting described couples timing births to avoid a Goat-year child. Contemporary Chinese posts, dating discussions, and videos still contain examples of people screening out Goat-year partners or debating the old prejudice. That shows the belief survives online; these examples do not establish how common it is today, or where it is most prevalent. Where people push back, it is often with the reminder that the goat is, by its own etymology, a lucky animal.
Is there anything to it? The population-level question — whether families really do avoid Goat-year births, and whether it shows up in the data — is examined on this site’s rarest-sign page, where the evidence turns out to be mixed and much weaker than the saying assumes. For the sign’s own traits and years, see Year of the Goat; for how the “unlucky sign” question plays out across the whole zodiac, see unlucky zodiac signs. They present a birth year as folklore, not a verdict on a life.
Year of the Goat and bad luck: FAQ
Is the Year of the Goat really unlucky?
No. There is a real and long-standing folk superstition — centred on women and marriage — that Goat-year people are unlucky, captured in sayings like 十羊九不全 (“ten Goats, nine incomplete”). But it is a folk belief, not a fact, and this page did not find a classical Four Pillars rule that makes Goat-year births inherently unlucky — in BaZi, the zodiac animal is only the earthly branch of the year pillar, one of eight characters considered together. The goat also has longstanding auspicious associations in Chinese texts and wordplay.
Why do some people say not to marry a woman born in a Goat year?
It comes from an old prejudice that a Goat-year woman is fated to be widowed or to harm her husband (克夫). One published folklore study, by Liu Ruiming, proposes a physiognomic origin. The Han-era Qianfu Lun treats “four whites” as an ominous eye feature; by the Tang, Chaoye Qianzai associates the same phrase with a woman’s sexual and marital fate. Liu argues that later wordplay and reinterpretation eventually transferred the omen onto Goat-year women. This is a scholar’s reconstruction, not a continuously documented chain.
Did the superstition start with Empress Dowager Cixi?
Probably not. The popular story that it was invented in the late Qing to smear the Goat-born Cixi (or, in another version, Yuan Shikai) does not fit the record: the prejudice is documented in Qing novels and notebooks before Cixi held power, and in Ming-dynasty texts before that. Writer Ma Boyong and folklore scholar Liu Ruiming both place its roots well before the late Qing.
How old is the belief?
The documentary trail used on this page reaches Ming-period sources — a Ming almanac, the 耳目日书, and the Ming-life novel Jin Ping Mei — and hardens through the Qing (the 镜花缘 novel; an 1883 Shen Bao notice). Earlier evidence for the Goat-year marriage prejudice is much harder to establish, which is a limit of the evidence, not proof that the belief began in the Ming.
Did this superstition reach other countries?
A close parallel existed there. Tanizaki Junichiro’s 1940s novel The Makioka Sisters records a similar taboo around Osaka against marrying a Goat-year woman. The novel shows the prejudice was not confined to China, but it does not establish the direction, route, or timing of any transmission between the two.
Is it true that families avoid having Goat-year babies?
Some do, and reporting around recent Goat years described couples timing births to avoid one. Whether it shows up clearly in national birth data is disputed — the evidence is mixed and far weaker than the saying implies. That demographic question is examined separately on this site’s rarest-sign page.
Keep reading
Editorial note
Sources and stance. The genealogy of the superstition here follows two pieces of published Chinese research: the essay “The Goat is unlucky? On what grounds” (属羊的人命不好?凭什么) by the writer Ma Boyong, which assembles the Ming-and-Qing citations (耳目日书, Jin Ping Mei, 镜花缘, the 1883 Shen Bao notice, and Zhou Jianren’s 1920 New Youth account of the Lu Xun family), and folklore scholar Liu Ruiming’s study, which proposes a genealogy from the Han-era Qianfu Lun 四白 (“four whites”) omen to later female physiognomic readings such as the Tang Chaoye Qianzai phrase 妇人目有四白，五夫守宅, and then to later Goat-related reinterpretation, presented here as Liu’s reconstruction rather than a continuous proven chain. The classical citations are reported as those researchers present them, not as independently collated finds. The Lu Xun engagement case is also reported in English coverage of the superstition. The auspicious word-history (the Shuowen statements 羊，祥也 and 美，从羊从大 — for 祥, the Shuowen analyses 羊 as the phonetic element, 从示，羊声 — together with the 三阳开泰 pun and Dong Zhongshu’s Chunqiu Fanlu) is verified against 说文解字 and standard references. One detail is deliberately left out: sources disagree on the exact birth year and sign of Zhu An, the bride Lu Xun did marry, so this article states just the verified core — that his mother rejected an earlier match for being Goat-born. This page explains a cultural and historical belief for education and interest. It is folklore, not fact, and not medical, financial, or relationship advice; a birth year does not determine anyone’s character or destiny.