Nakshatra birthday

A nakshatra birthday is the day the star you were born under returns. It is the custom in Tamil Nadu.

Twenty-seven nakshatras

The path of the Moon around the sky is divided into twenty-seven equal parts, the nakshatras, from Ashwini to Revati. Each spans 13°20′ and is split into four quarters called padas. The Moon takes about 27.3 days to go through all of them, so it returns to the same nakshatra roughly once a month. Your janma nakshatra is the one the Moon was in when you were born.

Why Tamil families use the star, not the tithi

Tamil tradition uses a solar calendar for its months, and family occasions are marked by the star. The birthday is celebrated in the Tamil solar month of your birth, on the day the Moon is again in your birth nakshatra. Because the Moon visits each nakshatra about once in a solar month, the day is a near-monthly event and the tradition fixes the solar month to choose one of them. There is no adhika month to reason about in this reckoning.

Birth time still matters

A nakshatra lasts roughly a day, so your birth time tells us which one was running. If you were born close to the moment the Moon moved from one nakshatra to the next, a few minutes can change the answer. Use a recorded birth time where you have one. Place matters too, since it converts your local time to a universal time.

How this differs from janma tithi

Janma tithi follows the Moon's angle from the Sun and the lunar month; a nakshatra follows where the Moon sits against the stars and the solar month. The two often give different days in the same year. If your family marks birthdays by the tithi, use the janma tithi route instead; if it follows the star, choose the Nakshatra region.

Find your nakshatra birthday

On the calculator, set the region to Nakshatra-based (Tamil Nadu), then enter your birth date, time and place.

Open the calculator