The exact dates of the 2015 lunar year
The Wood Goat year ran from February 19, 2015 to February 7, 2016. Twelve lunar months came to 354 days in 2015, eleven or twelve short of the solar year, and that shortfall is what pulls the following new year back towards January.
The 2015 new year fell 19 days later in the Gregorian year than the 2014 one, February 19, 2015 against January 31, 2014. Why the 2015 boundary sits where it does, rather than on any fixed date, is worked through in how the Chinese calendar works.
What the Wood Goat pairing is taken to mean
The stem for 2015 is Yi and the branch is the Goat, which the tradition reads as one unit rather than two. In 2015 that branch is taken to mean someone gentle and indirect, more determined than the manner suggests. Wood, the element attached to 2015, adds growth, flexibility and the willingness to keep extending.
2015 is a yin year, the inward half of the Wood pair: 2014 carries the same element in its yang form, and the two are read as the same material handled differently. Taken together, 2015 is described as the goat temperament working through growth.
Born in January or early February 2015
From 1 January 2015 to February 18, 2015 the animal in force was still the Horse, not the Goat — 49 days of 2015 that most zodiac tables hand to the wrong animal. Someone born on 15 January 2015 is a Horse.
The first Goat of 2015 is anyone born on February 19, 2015 or later, and the last one anyone born on February 7, 2016. Against the 21 January to 20 February window the new year can occupy, February 19, 2015 is at the later end.
Where 2015 sits in the sixty-year cycle
2015 is position 32 of sixty in the sexagenary cycle, the Yi stem against the Goat branch. Ten stems and twelve branches only realign after sixty years, so the previous Wood Goat year was 1955 and the next is 2075.
Someone born in 1955 therefore returned to their own pillar in 2015, at sixty, which the tradition marks as a full turn rather than a birthday. A child born in 2015 meets the pairing again in 2075.
Compatibility, and what it rests on
The Goat of 2015 is grouped with the Rabbit and the Pig, four years either side: in this stretch of the calendar that is 2011 and 2019. Its opposition is the Ox, six years on from 2015 in 2021.
Those distances are arithmetic, not observation. Nothing about people born in 2015 was measured to produce them; 2015 stands four years from 2011 and six from 2021, and a twelve-part circle makes those the trine and the opposition just as it does in the western zodiac.
The western comparison for 2015
Because the 2015 lunar year opened on February 19, 2015, its first day falls under Pisces in the western zodiac, and its last, February 7, 2016, under Aquarius — while the animal for the whole of 2015 stays the Goat.
Handbooks equate the Goat of 2015 with Cancer, a pairing that lines up two twelve-part divisions rather than two claims about people. A western sign covers about thirty days, so 2015 holds twelve of them under one animal, and reading the 2015 Wood Goat as a year-long version of Cancer flattens both systems.
Questions people ask about this
When did the 2015 Chinese new year start?
February 19, 2015, and the year ran on to February 7, 2016 — 354 days.
What animal is 2015?
The Goat, in its Wood form, from February 19, 2015 onward; a birth earlier in 2015 is a Horse.
Was 2015 a leap year in the Chinese calendar?
No. 2015 ran twelve months and 354 days, so no month was doubled.
I was born in January 2015 — which animal am I?
The Horse, unless you were born on February 19, 2015 or later, which is when the 2015 year began.