Pinyin Sheets

Chinese Zodiac Animals in Chinese for Kids: Characters, Pinyin and Order

Published 2026-10-06 · Updated 2026-10-06

Chinese Zodiac Animals in Chinese: A Kids' Guide

Ask a child what their Chinese zodiac animal is and you'll usually get an instant answer and a big smile. The twelve animals are probably the most popular vocabulary set for young Chinese learners. They're concrete, easy to draw, and come with a built-in story.

This guide lists the animals in their traditional order, with characters and pinyin. It also shows how each animal pairs with an "earthly branch" character, and points out the tone traps that catch beginners. At the end there's a simple way to turn the list into worksheets.

Where the order comes from

The Hong Kong Observatory, which publishes Hong Kong's official lunar calendar tables, says the use of 12-year animal cycles to record years in China dates back to 100 A.D. Its order is: mouse (or rat), ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig (HKO).

The HKO also explains that the animal cycle matches the 12 earthly branches (地支), the second half of the traditional year names. Years that share an earthly branch share an animal (HKO).

The next one coming up is easy to check. The HKO's 2027 conversion table is titled the "Ding-wei year of the Goat" (HKO PDF). So children born between Lunar New Year 2027 and Lunar New Year 2028 are Goats. Following the order, 2026 was the Horse.

The 12 animals: characters and pinyin

The single-character forms are what you'll see in 十二生肖 (shí'èr shēngxiào, "the twelve zodiac animals"). Many animals also have an everyday two-character word that children hear more often, and we've added those in the last column. The pinyin and meanings are our own, written for beginners. The branch pairings follow the HKO's Chinese page (HKO 十二生肖) and the Hong Kong Education Bureau's New Year resource (EDB PDF).

# Animal Character Pinyin Earthly branch Everyday word
1 rat / mouse 鼠 shǔ 子 zǐ 老鼠 lǎoshǔ
2 ox 牛 niú 丑 chǒu 牛 niú
3 tiger 虎 hǔ 寅 yín 老虎 lǎohǔ
4 rabbit 兔 tù 卯 mǎo 兔子 tùzi
5 dragon 龙 lóng 辰 chén 龙 lóng
6 snake 蛇 shé 巳 sì 蛇 shé
7 horse 马 mǎ 午 wǔ 马 mǎ
8 goat / sheep 羊 yáng 未 wèi 羊 yáng
9 monkey 猴 hóu 申 shēn 猴子 hóuzi
10 rooster 鸡 jī 酉 yǒu 鸡 jī
11 dog 狗 gǒu 戌 xū 狗 gǒu
12 pig 猪 zhū 亥 hài 猪 zhū

Note the apostrophe in shí'èr. Pinyin uses it when a syllable starting with a, o or e follows another syllable and the break between them could be misread. Our pinyin initials and finals chart covers that rule along with the other spelling rules.

Tone traps in this list

All four tones, plus neutral

The list has a good spread of tones: 鸡 jī and 猪 zhū (first), 牛 niú, 龙 lóng, 蛇 shé, 羊 yáng and 猴 hóu (second), 鼠 shǔ, 虎 hǔ, 马 mǎ and 狗 gǒu (third), and 兔 tù (fourth). Tones are easy to mix up in a list like this, so check each one against the table rather than going from memory. For a tone-sorting game, write the twelve characters on cards and have your child sort them into four piles by tone.

老鼠 and 老虎: two third tones together

老鼠 and 老虎 are both "third tone + third tone" words. When two third tones meet, the first one changes and is pronounced close to a second tone (Putonghua phonetics summary). So 老虎 is written lǎohǔ but sounds like láohǔ. Children who learned 你好 (nǐ hǎo, said ní hǎo) already know this pattern. You can point out that it's the same thing.

Neutral tones in 兔子 and 猴子

The 子 in 兔子 and 猴子 is neutral tone: short, light and written without a mark. Compare it with 子 zǐ, the earthly branch in the table, which keeps its full third tone. This pair is a nice way to show that the same character can carry different tones in different words.

Telling the story (and its limits)

Most children meet the zodiac through the folk tale of a great race, in which the rat finishes first and the pig last. The Hong Kong Education Bureau retells the race in its New Year resource, and also says that stories like this may have been added later rather than explaining where the zodiac really came from (EDB PDF).

The same resource discusses linking each animal to a two-hour period of the day (时辰), and again notes this link may not be well founded (EDB PDF). It's fine to enjoy the stories. Just present them as stories.

Activities that work

  • Find your animal. Use the HKO table above to look up each family member's animal. Young children are thrilled to discover that a grandparent shares their animal.
  • Order race. Mix up the twelve character cards and race to put them back in order.
  • Branch matching. For older children: match each animal to its earthly branch character. This helps later when they meet year names like 丁未.
  • Tone sort. Sort the animals by tone, as above.
  • Draw and label. Draw the family's animals and write the character and pinyin beneath each picture.

If you're planning around the holiday, combine this list with our Chinese New Year words for kids, which includes 生肖 and other festival vocabulary.

Make a zodiac worksheet

Type the twelve animal characters (or the everyday words) into the pinyin worksheet generator. Full mode prints each character in a tianzige square with pinyin above it. Tracing mode gives grey characters to write over. Blank mode leaves the squares empty for dictation. The sheet writes 老虎 and 老鼠 with their dictionary tones (lǎohǔ, lǎoshǔ), which is the standard way to write them, so model the spoken change aloud.

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