The exact dates of the 2005 lunar year
The Wood Rooster year ran from February 9, 2005 to January 28, 2006. Twelve lunar months came to 354 days in 2005, eleven or twelve short of the solar year, and that shortfall is what pulls the following new year back towards January.
The 2005 new year fell 18 days later in the Gregorian year than the 2004 one, February 9, 2005 against January 22, 2004. Why the 2005 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Wood Rooster pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2005 is Yi and the branch is the Rooster, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2005 that branch is taken to mean someone exact and outspoken, noticing detail and reporting it. Wood, the element attached to 2005, adds growth, flexibility and the willingness to keep extending.
2005 is a yin year, the inward half of the Wood pair: 2004 carries the same element in its yang form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2005 is described as the rooster temperament working through growth.
Born in January or early February 2005
From 1 January 2005 to February 8, 2005 the animal in force was still the Monkey, not the Rooster — 39 days of 2005 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2005 is a Monkey.
The first Rooster of 2005 is anyone born on February 9, 2005 or later, and the last one anyone born on January 28, 2006. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, February 9, 2005 is at the later end.
Where 2005 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2005 is position 22 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Yi stem against the Rooster branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Wood Rooster year was 1945 and the next is 2065.
Someone born in 1945 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2005, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2005 meets the pairing again in 2065.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Rooster of 2005 is grouped with the Ox and the Snake, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 2001 and 2009. Its opposition is the Rabbit, six years on from 2005 in 2011.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2005 was measured to produce them; 2005 stands four years from 2001 and six from 2011, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2005
Because the 2005 lunar year opened on February 9, 2005, its first day falls under Aquarius in the western zodiac, and its last, January 28, 2006, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2005 stays the Rooster.
Handbooks equate the Rooster of 2005 with Virgo, a pairing that lines up two twelve-part divisions rather than two claims about people. A western sign covers about thirty days, so 2005 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2005 Wood Rooster as a year-long version of Virgo flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2005 Chinese new year start?
February 9, 2005, and the year ran on to January 28, 2006 — 354 days.
What animal is 2005?
The Rooster, in its Wood form, from February 9, 2005 onward; a birth earlier in 2005 is a Monkey.
Was 2005 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
No. 2005 ran twelve months and 354 days, so no month was doubled.
I was born in January 2005 — which animal am I?
The Monkey, unless you were born on February 9, 2005 or later, which is when the 2005 year began.