Two methods · free · nothing saved
Both methods are below and they are not equals. The date of birth gives the Moon's actual position. A name gives you back whatever somebody decided at a naming ceremony — which is genuinely useful when it was decided that way, and silent about the fact when it was not.
Method one · the reliable one
The Moon's sidereal position is an astronomical fact and nobody's choices are in the chain. Enter the date; add the time only if you know it.
Method two · the fallback
Only the first sound of the name is read. The rest of it contributes nothing to this calculation, so Rohan, Rohit and Rohini all resolve identically.
Why the two methods are not equals
In the Namakaran tradition the family astrologer computed the Moon's position at birth, found the nakshatra pada, and told the family which sound the child's name had to begin with. The name was chosen to encode the chart. Read in that direction the method is not a shortcut at all — it is a lookup of information that was deliberately stored in the name, and it works perfectly.
Read in the other direction, which is what almost everyone wants today, it only works if that convention was actually followed. Plenty of names were not chosen that way: a grandparent's name, a deity, a film, a letter suggested by a relative rather than an astrologer, a sound the parents simply liked. Every one of those cases produces a clean, confident, wrong answer, and the method cannot tell you when it has failed. That is what makes it risky, and it is why this page will not present the two results side by side as if they were two opinions.
If your name says one sign and your birth data says another, the useful conclusion is not that astrology is inconsistent. It is that your name was probably not chosen from a nakshatra, which is unremarkable. The calculated one is your rashi.
One partial exception is worth knowing. Some practitioners use the rashi naam for ritual purposes — the sankalpa during a puja, for instance — while using the chart rashi for everything predictive. That is a coherent position rather than a contradiction. But for transits, dasha timing, matching or a forecast, the chart is the input.
A rashi is where the Moon was, in the sidereal zodiac. A Western star sign is where the Sun was, in the tropical zodiac. Different body, different zodiac — they agree only by coincidence, and this is the single most common mistake people make with any Indian astrology tool.
The Moon spends about two and a quarter days in each sign, so a birth date settles the rashi roughly nine times out of ten. The calculator above says outright when your date is one of the exceptions rather than quietly choosing the sign that covered more of the day.
The classical table assigns 100 sounds across 108 padas, so some are reused. Thirteen of them are claimed by more than one nakshatra. Where a name lands on one, every candidate is shown — picking one would fabricate precision the method does not have.
Ta written in Roman is two different letters in Devanagari — the retroflex belongs to Purva Phalguni and Sinh, the dental to Swati and Tula. A Roman-only lookup cannot always tell them apart, so where the spelling is ambiguous both are offered rather than guessed.
The whole table
Nine padas per sign, 108 in all. Each row links to that sign's pada-by-pada breakdown.
| Rashi | Nakshatra padas | Sounds |
|---|---|---|
| Mesh मेष | Ashwini, Bharani, Krittika pada 1 | Chu, Che, Cho, La, Lee, Lu, Le, Lo, A |
| Vrishabh वृषभ | Krittika padas 2-4, Rohini, Mrigashira padas 1-2 | Ee, U, Ae, O, Va / Ba, Vi / Bi, Vu / Bu, Ve / Be, Vo / Bo |
| Mithun मिथुन | Mrigashira padas 3-4, Ardra, Punarvasu padas 1-3 | Ka, Kee, Ku, Gha, Ing, Chha, Ke, Ko, Ha |
| Kark कर्क | Punarvasu pada 4, Pushya, Ashlesha | Hi, Hu, He, Ho, Da, Dee, Doo, De, Do |
| Sinh सिंह | Magha, Purva Phalguni, Uttara Phalguni pada 1 | Ma, Mee, Moo, Me, Mo, Ta, Tee, Too, Te |
| Kanya कन्या | Uttara Phalguni padas 2-4, Hasta, Chitra padas 1-2 | To, Pa, Pee, Poo, Sha, Na, Tha, Pe, Po |
| Tula तुला | Chitra padas 3-4, Swati, Vishakha padas 1-3 | Ra, Ree, Ru, Re, Ro, Ta, Tee, Too, Te |
| Vrishchik वृश्चिक | Vishakha pada 4, Anuradha, Jyeshtha | To, Na, Nee, Noo, Ne, No, Ya, Yee, Yu |
| Dhanu धनु | Mula, Purva Ashadha, Uttara Ashadha pada 1 | Ye, Yo, Bha, Bhee, Bhu, Dha, Pha, Bhe |
| Makar मकर | Uttara Ashadha padas 2-4, Shravana, Dhanishta padas 1-2 | Bho, Ja, Ji, Khi / Ju, Khu / Je, Khe / Jo, Kho / So, Ga, Gee |
| Kumbh कुम्भ | Dhanishta padas 3-4, Shatabhisha, Purva Bhadrapada padas 1-3 | Gu, Ge, Go, Sa, See, Su, Se, So, Da |
| Meen मीन | Purva Bhadrapada pada 4, Uttara Bhadrapada, Revati | Dee, Du, Tha, Jha, Da / Tra, De, Do, Cha, Chee |
Notice how many rows begin or end mid-nakshatra. Nine of the twenty-seven nakshatras straddle a rashi boundary, so the table above is assembled from padas rather than from nakshatra names — Krittika pada 1 is Mesh while padas 2 to 4 are Vrishabh, and a list built the lazy way is wrong for three quarters of everyone born under it.
To go the other way — from a birth date to the single pada and its one sound — use the baby name finder. For the nakshatra with its ruling planet, deity and gana, use the nakshatra calculator, and for the whole chart the free kundli.
Only for a name that was chosen from the birth star. In the Namakaran tradition the family astrologer worked out the Moon's pada and told the family which sound the name had to start with — so that name carries the chart. Read backwards, the method returns whatever the naming ceremony decided. If the name was picked for any other reason, it returns a confident answer with nothing behind it, and it cannot tell you which of the two happened.
The date of birth, without qualification. The Moon's position is an astronomical fact and nobody's naming choices are in the chain. Use the name method only when the birth date is genuinely unknown.
For the rashi, usually not — the Moon stays in one sign for about two and a quarter days, so most birth dates settle it. The time decides it only when the birth falls close to a change of sign, and this page says so explicitly when your date is one of those.
Because they are different things. A Western star sign is the Sun's position in the tropical zodiac. A rashi is the Moon's position in the sidereal zodiac. Two different bodies, two different zodiacs — they agree only by coincidence.
Then the name does not begin with any of the hundred sounds the tradition assigns to a pada, which is common for names that were not chosen this way, for imported names, and for spellings that drifted. It is not an error and it says nothing about the name.
No. Both forms run server-side and nothing is written down. The values appear in the address bar because the form is a plain link — clear them by loading the page again.