Every full moon name, month by month, and what each one is good for

Every full moon of the year has a name, and most of them describe something that was happening on the ground when it rose: an animal, a crop, a kind of weather. They're a folk calendar, which is why they still work as reflection prompts — each one is already about a stage of a year.

Where the names come from

The list in common use was popularized by the Old Farmer's Almanac and draws on Native American, Colonial American, and European naming traditions. It's worth being clear that there is no single canonical set: different nations used different names for the same moon, and the tidy twelve-name list is a later compilation rather than one tradition's calendar. Use it as what it is — a useful, widely shared shorthand.

The twelve

• January — Wolf Moon. The year at its coldest and quietest. What do you want this year to be about, in one sentence?
• February — Snow Moon. Deep winter, heaviest snowfall. What are you waiting out, and is waiting still the right call?
• March — Worm Moon. The ground softens and turns. What's ready to be started, badly, this month?
• April — Pink Moon. Named for early spring phlox, not for the moon's colour. What's growing that you didn't plant on purpose?
• May — Flower Moon. Everything at once. What are you saying yes to, and what is it crowding out?
• June — Strawberry Moon. A short, specific harvest. What's ripe right now that won't keep?
• July — Buck Moon. New antlers on the deer. What are you growing back after losing?
• August — Sturgeon Moon. The big catch of late summer. What have you been fishing for, and are you using the right net?
• September — Corn Moon. Harvest, counting, storing. What did the year actually yield so far?
• October — Hunter's Moon. Provisioning before the cold. What do you need to have in place before winter?
• November — Beaver Moon. Building the lodge. What are you shoring up, and who's helping?
• December — Cold Moon. The long night. What are you carrying into next year that you could put down?

The Harvest Moon exception

The Harvest Moon isn't tied to a month. It's the full moon nearest the autumn equinox, which usually makes it September's — but roughly every three years it lands in early October instead, and in those years September's moon keeps the Corn Moon name and October's Hunter's Moon steps aside. It's named for a real effect: around the equinox the moon rises only a short while later each night, giving several evenings of early moonlight to work by.

Blue moons and thirteenth moons

A lunar cycle runs about 29.5 days, so a year holds about 12.37 full moons — which means roughly every two and a half years there's a thirteenth. The modern definition of a blue moon is the second full moon in a single calendar month; the older almanac definition is the third of four in a single season. Neither has anything to do with colour.

How Luna Post uses them

Each Luna Post edition is named for its moon — the Buck Moon edition, the Cold Moon edition — and mails ahead of the actual full moon date so it's in your hands around the night itself. The artwork on the front is made for that specific moon, so a year of subscribing leaves you with twelve cards that double as a record of the year.

For what's physically going on overhead, see what actually happens at a full moon. For what to do when one arrives, see how to build a full moon ritual you'll actually keep. Or just start with the next one.