We use Full Moon names that were used during Native American and Colonial times to help track the seasons.
Depending on the tribe, May’s Full Moon was called the Full Flower Moon as well as Mother’s Moon, Milk Moon, and Corn Planting Moon.
The May Moon marked a time of increasing fertility with temperatures warm enough for safely bearing young, a near end to late frosts, and plants in bloom.
There’s a full moon happening in tonight, but not just any full moon. This “supermoon” is happening Saturday night.
It’s an event that happens a few times every year and is a good chance for photographers to nab a picture of the moon when it appears at its biggest and brightest.
The definition of a supermoon is when a full moon closely lines up with its perigee, or its closest point to Earth, in its orbit. The moon has a slightly eliptical orbit around Earth with one side of the orbit closer to Earth than the other. The side closest to the Earth is called the perigee and the side farthest from the Earth is known as the apogee.
Full Moon Names and Their Meanings
Full Moon names date back to Native Americans, of what is now the northern and eastern United States. The tribes kept track of the seasons by giving distinctive names to each recurring full Moon.
Their names were applied to the entire month in which each occurred. There was some variation in the Moon names, but in general, the same ones were current throughout the Algonquin tribes from New England to Lake Superior.
European settlers followed that custom and created some of their own names. Since the lunar month is only 29 days long on the average, the full Moon dates shift from year to year. Here is the Farmers Almanac’s list of the full Moon names.
~Full Sturgeon Moon~
August
The fishing tribes are given credit for the naming of this Moon, since sturgeon, a large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water, were most readily caught during this month. A few tribes knew it as the Full Red Moon because, as the Moon rises, it appears reddish through any sultry haze. It was also called the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.
