One placement in twelve
Roughly one person in twelve has the Sun in Leo, and about one in three hundred and sixty five shares this exact date. Whatever the sign is read to mean, it is being said about a very large group, and it cannot be the part of a chart that distinguishes anybody.
That is not an argument against the Sun. In traditional practice it carries real weight, as the chart's centre and the body whose annual return the whole system is anchored to. It is an argument against treating it as a personality summary, which is the use popular writing puts it to and the use it supports least well.
The confusion comes from the word sign doing two jobs. In the tradition it names a thirty degree division of the ecliptic. In popular use it names a character type, and the second meaning was grafted on much later.
What this date does pin down
At noon across every year from 1930 to 2035, the Sun on 5 August has fallen between roughly twelve and about thirteen and a half degrees of Leo. The band is tight because the leap day cancels the quarter day the calendar loses each year, holding the date against a fixed solar longitude.
Thirteen degrees places the Sun in the second of Leo's three ten degree bands, from ten to twenty, which the Chaldean order gives to Jupiter. That is a genuinely narrower statement than the sign, since it applies to about ten days of births rather than thirty, and almost no birthday page bothers to work it out.
The placements that actually vary
The Moon changes sign every two and a bit days, so among people sharing this birthday it is distributed across all twelve signs, and among those born on the same 5 August it may still differ by the hour. The Ascendant changes every few minutes, which means two births in the same hospital an hour apart can have different rising signs and a completely different house structure.
Mercury and Venus stay close to the Sun and so are constrained by the date, though not fixed by it. Mars, Jupiter and the outer planets follow their own cycles and are decided by the year rather than by the day. It is the combination of those, not the Sun alone, that makes one chart unlike another.
The outer bodies move slowly enough that everyone born within a year or two shares them, which is why they are read as describing a generation rather than a person.
Using the date properly
Treated honestly, a birthday supplies a sign, a solar degree to within a small margin and a decan. That is a real if modest set of facts, and it is more than the usual page provides.
Everything past it needs an hour and a place. The widget above takes both, returns the exact solar degree for your own year instead of the century wide band, and reports how far the birth stood from the nearest sign boundary, which is the question people usually meant to ask when they looked up their date.
Questions people ask about this
Is 5 August always Leo?
Yes. The Sun sits around thirteen degrees into the sign, roughly halfway between the two ingresses, so no year of birth and no hour of the day changes the sign.
Why is the sun sign called the least personal placement?
Because about a twelfth of everyone shares it. The Moon and the rising sign change far faster, so they separate people that a sign name groups together.
What degree is the Sun on this date?
Between about twelve and roughly thirteen and a half degrees of Leo at noon across the last century. Your own year and birthplace narrow it to a single value in the widget above.
Which decan applies?
The second decan of Leo, ten to twenty degrees, assigned to Jupiter in the Chaldean order. The tradition reads it as the sign's warmth given room to expand.
Can two people born on the same day have very different charts?
Yes, easily. Born a few hours apart they can have different moon signs, and born an hour apart they can have different rising signs and an entirely different house framework.
Are Mercury and Venus fixed by the date?
Not fixed, but limited. Mercury never strays far from the Sun and Venus stays within about two signs of it, so the date narrows both without deciding either.