Moon Names
Flower Moon
May’s full moon, arriving when flowers are abundant across the northern hemisphere.
May is the month when blooming becomes impossible to miss in temperate latitudes, and the name reflects nothing more complicated than that. It is one of the few in the list that needs no explanation and has no competing theory.
Milk Moon comes from the Old English Þrimilcemōnaþ, Thrimilce — the month of three milkings — recorded by Bede, when the grass was rich enough that cows could be milked three times a day. Corn Planting Moon marks the agricultural deadline it implies.
May full moons sit low in the sky in the northern hemisphere, because the sun is riding high toward the June solstice and the full moon always sits opposite it. A low full moon spends its time in thicker air near the horizon, which is why May and June full moons so often look large and distinctly golden.
Also known as
- Corn Planting Moon
- Milk Moon
- Hare Moon
The 1778 record
Travelling among the Dakota in 1766 and 1767, Captain Jonathan Carver wrote down all twelve month names in a single passage. Published in 1778, it predates the almanac list by roughly a century and a half and is the oldest independent check on these names.
Maythe Month of Flowers
Sources
- Maine Farmers’ AlmanacOrigin of the popularised moon name list and the seasonal blue moon rule, 1930s editions
- Full Moon NamesThe Old Farmer’s Almanac
- Travels Through the Interior Parts of North-America, in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768London, printed for the author — ch. IV, “Their Method of reckoning Time”, pp. 250–252, 1778
- The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione, 725)Translated by Faith Wallis, Liverpool University Press, 1999