The weekday you arrived
Most people know their birth date by heart but have to think about which day of the week it was. It is a small detail with a surprising amount attached to it: an old nursery rhyme, the weekday your private weeks still start on, and the pattern of weekdays your birthday cycles through every year. The calendar page above shows your birth month exactly as it would have looked hanging on a wall, with your day circled.
The bar chart counts every birthday you have had so far, including the day you were born, and sorts them by weekday. Over a long life the bars even out, but early on they can be lopsided, which is why some people feel they “always” have their birthday on a Monday.
How we calculate it
Your device’s calendar works out the weekday for any Gregorian date, so we simply ask it for the weekday of your birth date and of each birthday since. Because 365 days is 52 weeks and one day, each birthday falls one weekday later than the last, and two later after a 29 February. The calendar has a full cycle of 400 years, after which every date falls on the same weekday again.
| Weekday | Line from the rhyme |
|---|---|
| Monday | Monday’s child is fair of face |
| Tuesday | Tuesday’s child is full of grace |
| Wednesday | Wednesday’s child is full of woe |
| Thursday | Thursday’s child has far to go |
| Friday | Friday’s child is loving and giving |
| Saturday | Saturday’s child works hard for a living |
| Sunday | The child born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, and good and gay |
Worked example. 12 April 1990 was a Thursday. The next year’s birthday, 12 April 1991, moved one day to Friday. 1992 was a leap year and 29 February came before 12 April, so the 1992 birthday jumped two days to Sunday. Because of that leap-year jump, 1996 skipped Thursday altogether, and the first Thursday birthday after 1990 came in 2001, eleven years later.
A small fact that stays with you
Knowing the weekday you were born makes a nice detail for birthday cards and family trees, and it tells you which day your “week birthday” falls on for life. It also answers a question that comes up surprisingly often: whether your next big birthday will be on a weekend. The list under the chart shows your next few birthdays and their weekdays, so you can plan ahead.
Questions people ask
Why does my birthday move one weekday each year?
A common year is 365 days, which is 52 weeks plus one day. So your birthday slides forward one weekday each year, and two weekdays when a 29 February falls in between.
How long until my birthday lands on the same weekday as my birth?
Usually 5, 6 or 11 years, depending on where the leap years fall. The full pattern of the Gregorian calendar repeats every 400 years.
What is the most common day to be born?
In countries with many planned births, such as the United States, weekdays are noticeably more common than weekends, because scheduled caesareans and inductions are rarely booked for Saturdays and Sundays.
Is the Monday’s child rhyme meant to be taken seriously?
No. It is a traditional English nursery rhyme first written down in the 19th century, and it is just for fun.
Sources. Gregorian calendar; “Monday’s Child” rhyme as recorded in A. E. Bray, Traditions of Devonshire (1838). Calculations run in your browser; nothing you enter is sent anywhere.