Chinese Name Five-Element Analysis

Look up a name

Type a name (Chinese characters). Characters outside the 72-entry table are reported as unknown — the rules to check them by hand are both written out below; nothing is guessed.

What the table itself computes

The two schools are not two views of one truth — they are two different rules that mostly disagree. This is the same situation as the two colour systems for days (R38), where the agreement rate is exactly 50.0 percent. Here it is lower still.

of 72 table characters, the two schools agree on 15 / 72（20.8%） — 15 of 72 table characters (20.8 percent)，57 disagree。

Distribution by element

The 72-character table

Every row is engine-computed from the radical and the Kangxi stroke count — the stored facts are the character, its radical, its pinyin and its stroke count; the two element verdicts are derived, so the table cannot drift from the rules.

Why both schools are shown, and neither is corrected

The form school and the stroke school come from different logic: one reads meaning-bearing structure, the other reads a number. Neither is a rounding error of the other, so this page does not average them, does not hide either, and does not pretend they coincide. Where they disagree — 57 of 72 characters here — the page says so on every row. Which school a family or a naming professional follows is their choice; what this site contributes is that both readings are computed, versioned and checkable. See the conventions index on the methodology page (R39).

A worked example

Zi Han (梓涵): 梓 is a Wood radical, 11 Kangxi strokes, and 11 ends in 1 — both schools say Wood, agreement. 涵 has the water radical 氵, 12 Kangxi strokes (氵 counted as 4), and 12 ends in 2 — the form school says Water, the stroke school says Wood, disagreement. One name, one agreement, one disagreement — exactly the situation the side-by-side display exists for.

Why are there two five-element methods for one character?

Because the tradition carries two naming conventions. The form school reads the element off the radical: 木 gives Wood, 氵 gives Water, 日 gives Fire. The stroke school reads it off the last digit of the Kangxi stroke count. They are independent rules, and over the 72 characters in this table they agree on only 15. Both verdicts are shown, with the agreement flagged, instead of quietly picking one.

What if my character is not in the table?

The tool reports it as unknown rather than guessing. Both methods are fully written out on this page, so any character can be checked by hand: find its Kangxi dictionary radical for the form school, and its Kangxi stroke count for the stroke school. This site only computes where a verified table entry exists — a smaller answer that is true beats a full answer that is invented.

Why does 氵 count as four strokes?

In Kangxi-era counting the water radical is written as the full character 水, four strokes, so any 氵 adds four to the stroke count. The same convention turns 扌 into 手, 忄 into 心, 艹 into the six-stroke 艸, and the walking radical 辶 into the seven-stroke 辵. Only 氵 appears in this table, but the conversion list is given in full on the page.

Does a name with a favourable element change my fate?

No. This page computes structure, not fortune: which element each character belongs to under each school, and, if you enter a birth date, how those elements sit relative to the day master — same, generating, generated by, controlling, or controlled by. It is a reference for self-understanding and cultural study, not a prediction, and not naming advice.

Reference index

Every enumerable component of ba zi has its own page here. Each page is computed by the same engine and can be checked item by item — none of it is a personality table.

• Chinese zodiac · 27 pages
• Sixty day pillars · 60 pages
• The twelve branches · 12 pages
• The twelve stages · 12 pages
• Ten gods by position · 30 pages
• The 64 hexagrams · 64 pages
• The 36 shen sha · 36 pages
• The 30 scenario pages · 30 pages
• The ten day masters · 10 pages
• The 8 stem & branch relations · 8 pages
• The five elements · 5 pages