Year of the Snake: Personality, Compatibility & Lucky Traits

The Snake is the sixth sign of the Chinese zodiac — wise, intuitive, and quietly magnetic. If you were born in a Snake year, here's what your sign is said to reveal about your personality, love life, and career.

Which years are the Year of the Snake?

Recent Snake years include 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013, and 2025, with the next in 2037. Because the Chinese year begins at Lunar New Year, those born in January or early February should check the rollover — you may belong to the previous sign, the Dragon.

Snake personality and traits

• Wise, intuitive, and perceptive.
• Calm, elegant, and self-possessed.
• Private and mysterious, with deep thoughts.
• Determined and strategic once decided.

Snakes can also be jealous, suspicious, and inclined to keep others at a distance.

Snake love and compatibility

The Snake's best matches are the Ox and Rooster, who value the Snake's depth and steadiness. The classic clash is with the Pig, whose openness and the Snake's guardedness can misalign. In love, Snakes are devoted, intense, and quietly romantic.

Snake careers

Insightful and analytical, Snakes thrive in research, psychology, finance, philosophy, and any field that rewards depth, strategy, and intuition.

For the full system — the five elements and the lunar-new-year rule — see our Chinese zodiac guide, and your complete reading calculates your animal, element, and yin/yang.