Full moon names

The twelve names and their dates

Times in Eastern Time. The name follows the month of the Eastern date, the way American almanacs assign it. Full calendars: moon calendar 2026 and moon calendar 2027.

Why each month has a name

The monthly names offer a way to follow the year through seasonal observations rather than numbers alone. In the Old Farmer's Almanac, those observations include winter weather, ripening crops, and animal activity. Its list draws on several traditions, so the familiar sequence is not a single calendar inherited unchanged from one community. The table brings these labels together with links to their individual stories and the calculated full moon times for this year and next.

Assigning one familiar name to each month makes a convenient modern guide, but lunar cycles do not fit calendar months exactly. Royal Museums Greenwich explains that twelve cycles take about 354 days, leaving room for an additional full moon in some years. Most labels here follow the calendar month, while Harvest Moon follows the September equinox. Blue Moon is another calendar label, with two definitions rather than a separate kind of Moon.

Harvest, Corn and Blue: the names that move

Ten of the twelve names are tied to a calendar month. The Harvest Moon follows the September equinox instead, the Hunter's Moon follows the Harvest Moon in some almanacs, and two more labels mark an extra full or new moon in a month. The dates below are worked out by this site's own astronomy code, not copied from a list.

• Harvest Moon is the full moon nearest the September equinox. Usually that is September's; between 2025 and 2030 it falls in October in 2025 and 2028, and in those years the September full moon is called the Corn Moon (September 7, 2025 and September 3, 2028).
• Hunter's Moon is October's name in the Old Farmer's Almanac. timeanddate.com defines it as the full moon after the Harvest Moon instead, which in October-Harvest years moves it to November; the Hunter's Moon page lists both.
• Blue Moon is the second full moon in one calendar month: May 31, 2026 and December 31, 2028. An older rule calls the third of four full moons in an astronomical season a Blue Moon: May 20, 2027 and August 23, 2029.
• Black Moon is the matching term for a second new moon in one month; the yearly calendars mark them.

Where the names come from

The Old Farmer's Almanac describes its names as a mixture of Native American, colonial American, and other North American traditions. Partnership With Native Americans adds that many English versions are interpretations of Indigenous-language terms, only loosely matched to Gregorian months. Its account describes calendars that differed among communities, including names for whole lunar months rather than just the night of the full moon. Treating today's twelve-name sequence as a universal Native American calendar would erase those differences.

Almanacs helped carry selected names into wider popular use, but printed lists have not always agreed. Wikipedia's historical overview records differing sequences in earlier publications and describes their later spread beyond almanacs into popular writing about the Moon. Even familiar origin stories need qualification: the Old Farmer's Almanac and Partnership With Native Americans identify Wolf Moon as likely English in origin, rather than Indigenous. Neither gives a definitive count of how many current labels belong to each tradition; both describe a mixed collection rather than a single inherited naming system.

South of the equator

These names reflect Northern Hemisphere seasonal patterns, including the North American and English traditions described by the Old Farmer's Almanac. December's Cold Moon, listed by Royal Museums Greenwich, therefore falls during Southern Hemisphere summer rather than winter. The labels can still serve as references to the same full moons, but their weather and harvest associations are not local seasonal descriptions everywhere. They should be read as inherited calendar language, not a forecast for the place where you observe.