What day of the week was I born?

The old rhyme about the day you were born

The rhyme first appeared in print in 1836, in a letter by the writer Anna Eliza Bray, who called it “a poetical adage on the subject common in our town”. Her town was Tavistock, in Devon. This is how she wrote it:

Monday’s child is fair in face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
Thursday’s child has far to go,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child works hard for its living;
And a child that’s born on a Christmas day,
Is fair and wise, good and gay.

There’s no Sunday line: the rhyme ends with Christmas Day. A Sunday line was in print by 1860, and it took a few different forms before settling into the one most people know today. Andrew Lang’s The Nursery Rhyme Book (1897) ends: “But the bairn that is born on the Sabbath day / Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.” Today most people also say “fair of face” rather than “fair in face”, and “works hard for a living”.

Wednesday gets the saddest line. It’s a rhyme, not a forecast: the words were chosen because they rhyme, and people have told it in different ways for nearly two hundred years.

How the day is worked out

Your date is counted in the Gregorian calendar, the one most of the world uses today. It repeats exactly every 400 years. Leap years follow three rules: every fourth year has a 29 February, except years ending in 00, unless they divide by 400. That’s why 2000 had a leap day and 1900 didn’t. Your birth date is only used in your browser; it isn’t sent anywhere.

Work it out by hand

The mathematician John Conway devised a way to do it in your head, called the Doomsday rule. In any year, these dates all fall on the same day of the week, the year’s “doomsday”: 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12, and the last day of February.

1. Start from the century’s day: Tuesday for the 1600s, Sunday for the 1700s, Friday for the 1800s, Wednesday for the 1900s, and Tuesday again for the 2000s.
2. Take the last two digits of the year. Count how many twelves fit into it, what’s left over, and how many fours fit into what’s left over.
3. Add those three numbers, and count that many days on from the century’s day. That’s the year’s doomsday.
4. Count from the nearest of the dates above to your birthday.

For April 12, 1994: the 1900s start on Wednesday. 94 is seven twelves with 10 left over, and 10 holds two fours. 7 + 10 + 2 = 19 days on from Wednesday is a Monday, so April 4, 1994 was a Monday, and April 12, eight days later, was a Tuesday.

Old dates and the calendar change

The Gregorian calendar began in October 1582, and countries adopted it at different times. Britain and its colonies, including those in North America, switched in September 1752, when 11 days were skipped. Dates on this page are given in the Gregorian calendar, so for someone born before their country switched, the day written down at the time may be different.

Remembering your birthday

If you check “Remember my birthday on this device”, the date is saved in your browser so the other birthday tools can use it. It’s never sent to us. Checking someone else’s birthday won’t replace it unless you choose to, and “Forget my birthday” removes it.