Yes, everyone around me knows (I think most like I saw it in a news letter), but most of us do not know what it actually means. Some just know a few things about their own sign because those attributes was told to them and actually fit. So it is more like a way to give compliments if someone who knows tells you “oh you are x, no wonder you are so great at y!”. So I have no negative feelings about it. I just don’t believe in it.

The only attribut i know that isn’t for my own sign is that Scorpions are horny ppl, my Scorpion friends brag about that. I don’t know why.

As a kid was it common to use it more like a group name just like some use the seasons like winter, summer, spring, autumn child. Many tv series, games and cartoons used it (not in a serious way). I actually bought as a kid the wrong sign from a glas smith and didn’t know it was wrong for many years, apparently it wasn’t even close to mine 😂

It probably relates to your age. When I grew up there were still newspapers (and dinosaurs) and you probably ran across a small horoscope section somewhere in there (especially on or near the comics page), so for me seeing the dates was virtually unavoidable. But I haven’t run across a random horoscope in over 20 years, so if you’re born after the millennium I’m sure it was much less prominent in your life.

I know mine because my personality is the stereotype of my sign. It’s just a coincidence, but it’s one that comes up from time to time

Do most nonbelievers know their sign, or do they have no idea?

In the very rare case where it comes up, I almost always have to look up the answer. Why would I have the signs and their date ranges memorized? This is like asking someone whose only tangentially heard of D&D to name his favorite first level spell.

I have no idea what sign I am. Never cared, was never asked.

Zodiac signs are about as accurate as tarot readings or reading tea leaves. They’re even wrong about what they are based on. The star locations and sun precession hasn’t coincided with the original 12 zodiac constellations for centuries. People use the dates and signs as they were set by astrology tradition ages ago, but the dates when the sun changes from one constellation to the next is also absolutely arbitrary to make it match exactly 4 and a half weeks.

The personality descriptions for zodiac signs are textbook examples of cold reading. A technique of making intentionally ambiguous but agreeable affirmations so that people project their self-view onto the descriptions disregarding evidence or specifities.

It is a superstition as it is the belief on the supernatural influence of the relative apparent position of stars in the sky over the behavior and personality of individuals. It’s a, mostly, harmless superstition, but superstitious none the less.

The questions still valid… Why would I simply be aware what year I was born in under the Chinese zodiac so that I could get a new SS card. You are missing the forest for the trees.

I think it’s at a sort of weird crossroads between superstition and factual data, because it is trivial to calculate the factual data regarding the position of any star in the sky at any point, but the superstition comes in when you associate the positions of a rather arbitrary group of stars in relation to a date of birth.

I just thought of this though- you could argue that this is an anti-astrology security measure because it proves that you can’t guess someone’s zodiac sign based on things like their interests and personality traits.