Research · Triple signs
Triple signs: how rare is yours?
Same sign for your Sun, Moon and rising. We counted how often each of the twelve actually happens, and why the answer depends on sunrise.
Urania's Mirror, London 1824 · Library of Congress
At a glance
Triple Scorpio is about 1 in 1,383 births at 40°N. The rarest triple sign is triple Pisces, about 1 in 3,200.
- Most common triple
- Triple Virgo1 in 1,222
- Rarest triple
- Triple Pisces1 in 3,200
- Any triple at all
- 1 in 141all 12 triples combined
- Triple Scorpio rank
- 389 of 1,7281 = most common big three
Check your big threeYour exact odds, out of 1,728.
The lead
A triple sign is a sunrise baby near a new moon
Try this today
- Ask a parent what time you were born. If it was mid-morning or later, a triple is off the table.
- Check a moon phase calendar for your birthday: a triple sign needs a new moon within a few days.
Here is the fun part nobody tells you. To be a triple anything, two things have to line up at once.
First, your rising sign has to match your Sun sign. The Sun's sign is on the eastern horizon only around sunrise, so you were born within a couple of hours of it, either side, give or take with the season and latitude. Night owls need not apply.
Second, your Moon has to be in the same sign as the Sun. The Moon passes the Sun once a month, at the new moon, and only stays in the Sun's sign for a couple of days around it. So a triple sign is, quite literally, a sunrise birth in the dark of the moon.
Put those together across every birth moment from 2000 to 2014 and all twelve triples combined come to about 1 in 141 births. That sounds rare until you remember any single big three averages 1 in 1,728, and there are twelve triples. Triples as a group are almost exactly as common as chance would give.
The sky behind it
Method. We did not survey anyone and we did not roll random numbers. We stepped through every calendar day from 2000-01-01 to 2014-12-31 (5,479 days) and every four-minute slot of local clock time within each day, 1,972,440 birth moments in all. Each moment is weighted by the number of babies the US Social Security Administration recorded for that date (62.2 million births), divided evenly across the day. For each moment the Sun and Moon come from NASA JPL's DE442 ephemeris (tropical zodiac, geocentric) and the rising sign from the local sidereal time at the stated latitude.
What it assumes. Births spread evenly through the 24 hours. Real hospitals have a daytime bulge (scheduled C-sections and inductions), which nudges rising-sign pairings a little; our earlier rising-sign study found it moves no single rising sign by more than 0.03 points. The calendar is the US one for every latitude, so the non-US rows are "the same births, born further north or south", not a census of those countries.
The ranking
Triple Scorpio is more common than you think
Triple Scorpio has a reputation. Intense, magnetic, the friend who remembers everything. The numbers are less dramatic: at 40° north it is about 1 in 1,383 births, ranked 389 of all 1,728 big threes. That is more common than an even split.
The reason is the rising sign. Scorpio is one of the slowest signs to rise in the northern mid-latitudes, so the window in which the Scorpio Sun sits on the horizon is long. October and November births are not rare in the US either.
The most common triple is triple Virgo, 1 in 1,222, ranked 30. Late-summer birth peak plus a slow-rising sign does it again.
At the other end, triple Pisces is 1 in 3,200, and triple Aries close behind at 1 in 3,096. Both are fast-rising signs at northern latitudes, which squeezes the sunrise window to its shortest. If you are a triple Pisces, you really are uncommon, at least on paper.
The sky behind it
| Triple | Miami | 40°N | 51.5°N (London) | 34°S (Sydney) | Rank at 40°N |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Triple Pisces | 1 in 2,575 | 1 in 3,200 | 1 in 4,047 | 1 in 1,604 | 1,707 of 1,728 |
| Triple Aries | 1 in 2,583 | 1 in 3,096 | 1 in 4,212 | 1 in 1,423 | 1,677 of 1,728 |
| Triple Aquarius | 1 in 2,239 | 1 in 2,561 | 1 in 3,122 | 1 in 1,507 | 1,410 of 1,728 |
| Triple Taurus | 1 in 2,020 | 1 in 2,344 | 1 in 3,125 | 1 in 1,366 | 1,276 of 1,728 |
| Triple Capricorn | 1 in 1,706 | 1 in 1,836 | 1 in 2,012 | 1 in 1,637 | 1,036 of 1,728 |
| Triple Gemini | 1 in 1,615 | 1 in 1,698 | 1 in 1,844 | 1 in 1,442 | 920 of 1,728 |
| Triple Sagittarius | 1 in 1,563 | 1 in 1,466 | 1 in 1,518 | 1 in 1,822 | 625 of 1,728 |
| Triple Scorpio | 1 in 1,574 | 1 in 1,383 | 1 in 1,265 | 1 in 2,240 | 389 of 1,728 |
| Triple Leo | 1 in 1,505 | 1 in 1,365 | 1 in 1,180 | 1 in 2,006 | 323 of 1,728 |
| Triple Libra | 1 in 1,504 | 1 in 1,309 | 1 in 1,198 | 1 in 2,561 | 171 of 1,728 |
| Triple Cancer | 1 in 1,352 | 1 in 1,295 | 1 in 1,266 | 1 in 1,727 | 137 of 1,728 |
| Triple Virgo | 1 in 1,362 | 1 in 1,222 | 1 in 1,135 | 1 in 2,534 | 30 of 1,728 |
Meaning
What a triple sign means in a chart reading
Try this today
- Write one sentence for how your sign shows up in each layer: purpose, feelings, first impressions.
- Then look at your Venus and Mars signs. That is where a triple starts to get specific.
In a traditional reading the Sun is your core purpose, the Moon your emotional needs and the rising sign the way you meet the world. When all three share a sign, that sign's style tends to show up everywhere at once. A triple Scorpio is read as deeply private and fiercely loyal in all three layers; a triple Gemini as curious and talkative from the inside out.
Astrologers also point out what a triple does not tell you. The rest of the chart still matters: Mercury, Venus and Mars, the houses, the aspects between planets. Two triple Scorpios can be very different people.
And because a triple is a sunrise new-moon birth, the Sun and Moon both sit close to the ascendant, in the 1st or 12th house. Many astrologers read that as a strong, visible personality. That is interpretation, not statistics, so take it as a prompt for reflection.
Where you were born
Your birthplace can flip the rarest triple
Because a triple depends on the rising sign, latitude changes the order. At Miami's latitude, closer to the equator, the rarest triple is triple Aries at 1 in 2,583, and the gap between triples is gentle. At London's latitude the rarest is triple Aries, at 1 in 4,212.
Cross the equator and the rising order flips. Run the same births at 34° south and the rarest triple becomes triple Libra (1 in 2,561), while triple Taurus turns into the most common. If you were born in Sydney or Buenos Aires, your friends from New York have the odds backwards.
Try it
Find the triples in the room
Pick a triple and a latitude, then slide the crowd size. You get the odds, the rank and the chance that at least one person in the room shares that triple.
Pick a triple
Birthplace latitude
Triple Scorpio: about 1 in 1,383 births.
Rank 389 of 1,728 big threes here (the more common half).
Chance at least one of them is a triple Scorpio: 30%. Expected number: 0.4.
More to read
Shorter reads. Each opens in place.
Scale
A stadium of triples
Picture 50,000 people born in these years, seated in one stadium at 40°N. About 36 of them would be triple Scorpios, 41 triple Virgos and 16 triple Piscess. Rare, but you could still fill a lecture hall.
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Close cousins
Doubles are much more common
Sharing two of three is far easier. Same Sun and rising only needs a sunrise birth; same Sun and Moon only needs a new-moon birth. A double Scorpio Sun and rising, any Moon, is about 1 in 116 at 40°N.
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Quick answers
How rare is a triple Scorpio?
About 1 in 1,383 births, from 62 million US births 2000 to 2014 at 40° north. It ranks 389 of 1,728 big threes, so it is slightly more common than an even split.
What is the rarest triple sign?
Triple Pisces, at about 1 in 3,200 at 40°N, followed by triple Aries (1 in 3,096). In the southern hemisphere the order changes: at 34°S triple Libra is rarest.
What is the most common triple sign?
Triple Virgo, about 1 in 1,222 at 40°N. It combines a late-summer birth peak with one of the slowest rising signs.
What does triple Scorpio mean?
In traditional readings, Scorpio's depth and privacy show up in your core self (Sun), emotional life (Moon) and first impression (rising) all at once. The rest of the chart still shapes how that looks in a real person.
What time do you have to be born to be a triple sign?
Within a couple of hours of sunrise, before or after, since the Sun's sign has to be the one on the eastern horizon. You also need a birth within a couple of days of the new moon, so the Moon shares the Sun's sign.
How many people have a triple sign?
All twelve triples together come to about 1 in 141 births at 40°N, close to the 12 in 1,728 an even split would give.
