Named Full Moons

According to the Farmer’s Almanac, there are typically twelve named full moons every year. The exception to this is, of course, the somewhat rarer Blue Moon. Those twelve named full moons are:

• January – Wolf Moon
• February – Snow Moon
• March – Worm Moon
• April – Pink Moon
• May – Flower Moon
• June – Strawberry Moon
• July – Buck or Sturgeon Moon
• August – Fruit or Barley Moon
• September – Harvest Moon
• October – Hunters Moon
• November – Beaver Moon
• December – Cold or Long Nights Moon

These Full Moon names originated with the Native Americans, of what is now the northern and eastern United States. The full moons allowed the tribes to keep track of the seasons by giving names to each recurring full Moon. Basically, the entire "month" would be named after the full moon occurring that month.

Although there were a few differences between the names used by different tribes, mostly, they were similar. As European settlers moved in, they began to use the names as well. Since the Lunar cycle is only 29 days and our modern calendars have 30 or 31 days in a month, the dates of the full moon shifts from year to year, and occasionally allow that colorful Blue Moon.