Why the Moons Have Names

Wolf Moon, Strawberry Moon, Harvest Moon — where did the full moons get names like that? Mostly, they're a record of how the Native peoples of North America read the year. Different nations kept different names, fitted to their own country and their own work: moons for when the wolves howled in the hungry months, when the strawberries ripened, when the sturgeon ran, when the corn came in. Colonial farmers learned the names along with the knowledge behind them, and the almanacs carried both forward. The Maine Farmers' Almanac, especially, spread the list most of us know today, back in the 1930s — which is why the familiar set is a mix of genuine old tradition and a few almanac coinages.

Two names are special. The Harvest Moon is whichever full moon falls closest to the autumn equinox, in September or October, and its gift was practical: for several evenings in a row it rises right around sunset, which gave farmers extra light to bring in the harvest. A Blue Moon is just the second full moon in a single calendar month — and charmingly, even that definition is a mistake, a misreading printed in 1946 that the whole world decided to keep. Every culture names its moons — the Chinese lunar calendar, the Islamic and Hebrew calendars still used in religious life. And if you come across a "Celtic tree calendar" of moons, we'll tell you honestly: that's a modern invention, from Robert Graves's book The White Goddess in 1948. Beautiful, and brand-new.

In the Grove: the moon names we use are the almanac list, because they fit Idaho's seasons honestly — corn, cold, wolves, and all. But the point was never the name. The point is looking up.