Full moon names explained: Wolf Moon, blue moon, supermoon and more.

Full moon names fall into two groups. The traditional names, such as Wolf Moon in January or Harvest Moon in September, are seasonal labels that North American almanacs made popular. The other names, such as supermoon, blue moon, black moon and blood moon, describe something real about a particular full moon: its distance, its place in the calendar, or an eclipse. None of them describe a different kind of moon, and very few describe its color.

This article covers all twelve traditional names with their 2027 dates, where those names really come from, how they flip in the southern hemisphere, and each special type of moon with its 2027 example.

What are the full moon names and meanings?

These are the names most calendars use, with the explanations almanacs give for them. Where the date depends on your time zone, both are listed.

• Wolf Moon, January 22. Wolves howling near settlements in the depth of winter. In 2027 it is also the year’s supermoon.
• Snow Moon, February 20 in the Americas and the UK, February 21 in India and Australia. The heaviest snow of the northern winter, also called the Hunger Moon.
• Worm Moon, March 22. Earthworms returning to the surface as the ground thaws.
• Pink Moon, April 20 in the Americas and the UK, April 21 in India and Australia. Wild ground phlox, one of the first spring wildflowers; the moon itself does not turn pink.
• Flower Moon, May 20. The flood of blossoms in late spring.
• Strawberry Moon, June 18 in the US, June 19 in the UK, India and Australia. The short season for picking wild strawberries.
• Buck Moon, July 18, or July 19 in Australia. Male deer growing new antlers.
• Sturgeon Moon, August 17. The season when lake sturgeon were most easily caught.
• Harvest Moon, September 15 in the US, September 16 in the UK, India and Australia. Extra evening light for bringing in crops.
• Hunter’s Moon, October 15, or October 16 in Australia. Hunting game before winter.
• Beaver Moon, November 13 in the US, November 14 in the UK, India and Australia. Setting beaver traps before the rivers froze.
• Cold Moon, December 13, or December 14 in Australia. The long, cold nights of early winter.

Each of these full moons has its own page in the 2027 full moon calendar, with the exact UTC time and zodiac sign.

Where do the traditional names really come from?

Today’s almanacs tell a simple story. The Farmers’ Almanac says most names come from the Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, with additions from Lakota, Anishinaabe and Cherokee traditions, and that the almanacs have used them since the 1930s. That story is not wrong, but it is tidier than the history.

Many Native American nations did track time by the moon, and early accounts describe names tied to natural events. But the early written lists came from European observers, and they named lunar months, which begin at new moon, rather than full moons. The explorer Jonathan Carver published one such list in 1778, starting after the March equinox with Worm, Plants, Flowers, Hot, Buck, Sturgeon, Corn, Travelling, Beaver, Hunting, Cold and Snow. A century later, the army officer Richard Irving Dodge wrote that he had never met Plains people with fixed, shared names for each moon; the same moon might be named for planting corn one day and for the arrival of buffalo the next.

The almanac list then took on a life of its own. In 1937 the Maine Farmers’ Almanac printed a set of seasonal names it said came from “early English ancestors”, including Moon after Yule, Lenten Moon, Egg Moon, Hay Moon and Moon before Yule. Over the following decades, names from different peoples, languages and colonial writers were blended into one neat list of twelve, which spread widely through popular books from the 1990s onward.

So when you read that the Strawberry Moon is “the Algonquin name for June”, treat it as a simplification. The names are real, the seasons they describe are real, and some genuinely echo Indigenous observation. The single standardized calendar is a modern creation.

Other cultures name their full moons on their own terms. In the Hindu calendar each month’s full moon, or Purnima, carries its own festivals, such as Guru Purnima in Ashadha, Sharad Purnima at the end of the monsoon and Kartik Purnima in autumn. The Māori maramataka follows the moon to time fishing, eeling and planting. Full moon festivals such as Holi and Vesak are covered in holidays set by the moon in 2027, and the longer story is in the history of lunar calendars.

Harvest Moon, Hunter’s Moon and the southern hemisphere

Two names follow a rule rather than a month. The Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the September equinox, so it can land in September or early October. The Hunter’s Moon is the full moon after it. Around that equinox, northern moonrises come only a little later each evening, which once gave farmers usable light after sunset several nights in a row.

In 2027 the September equinox falls on September 23 at 06:01 UTC, so the Harvest Moon is the full moon of September 15 to 16 and the Hunter’s Moon follows on October 15 to 16.

South of the equator the seasons run six months apart, and some calendars for Australia, New Zealand and South Africa simply shift the northern names to match. In 2027 that gives a Buck Moon in January, Sturgeon in February, Harvest in March, Hunter’s in April, Beaver in May, Cold in June, Wolf in July, Snow in August, Worm in September, Pink in October, Flower in November and Strawberry in December. The Harvest Moon rule works cleanly: the full moon of March 22, 2027 is the one closest to the March equinox, and April 20 to 21 is the southern Hunter’s Moon. For the rest, EarthSky points out that flipping the names does not really work, since gray wolves were never native to the southern hemisphere, and records of southern full moon names in this style are hard to find. Local times for each date are on the Australia and New Zealand pages.

A blue moon is a matter of the calendar, a supermoon a matter of the orbit, and a blood moon a matter of shadow. It is the same moon every time.

Supermoon and micromoon: how close is close?

A supermoon is a full moon that falls near perigee, the closest point in the moon’s slightly oval orbit. The astrologer Richard Nolle coined the word in 1979 and defined it as a new or full moon within 90 percent of its closest approach. Astronomers prefer the dry term perigee syzygy, and there is still no single official threshold, so lists differ. According to NASA, the closest full moon can appear up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than the faintest full moon of the year.

A micromoon is the opposite: a full moon near apogee, the farthest point. You will not notice it by eye, only by comparing photos.

In 2027 the supermoon of January 22 is the clear one, at 357,635 km the closest and brightest full moon of the year. The Snow Moon of February 20, at 363,296 km, counts only under the broad 90 percent rule. The micromoon is the Buck Moon of July 18, the farthest full moon of 2027 at 405,968 km.

Blue moon and black moon: calendar quirks

A blue moon has nothing to do with color, and there are two definitions.

1. Seasonal blue moon. The older meaning, from that same 1937 Maine Farmers’ Almanac: when an astronomical season holds four full moons instead of three, the third is the blue moon.
2. Monthly blue moon. The second full moon in one calendar month. It began as a misreading of the almanac in a 1946 Sky & Telescope article by James Hugh Pruett, and spread through the StarDate radio program in 1980 and a Trivial Pursuit question in 1986.

In 2027 there is no monthly blue moon, but there is a seasonal blue moon on May 20: the third of four full moons between the March equinox and the June solstice. (A stricter reconstruction of the 1937 rule, using seasons of equal length, points to February 20 instead.) The moon can occasionally look bluish after big volcanic eruptions or wildfires, as it did in many places after Krakatoa in 1883, but that is unrelated to the name.

A black moon is not an astronomical term and has no single definition. Most often it means the second new moon in a calendar month. In 2027 that is the black moon of August 31 in the Americas, Europe, Africa and India. In Singapore, Sydney and Auckland that new moon falls on September 1, so September 30 becomes the black moon there.

What is a blood moon, and is there one in 2027?

A blood moon is a total lunar eclipse. Earth passes directly between the sun and moon, and instead of vanishing, the moon glows copper red, lit only by sunlight bent through Earth’s atmosphere, the combined glow of every sunrise and sunset on the planet. Some modern moon-name lists also call October’s full moon the Blood Moon, which adds to the confusion.

2027 has no blood moon. There are three penumbral lunar eclipses, when the moon only grazes Earth’s pale outer shadow and dims slightly: February 20 (greatest at 23:12 UTC), July 18 (16:02 UTC) and August 17 (07:13 UTC). The next total lunar eclipse is on December 31, 2028 (UTC). The details are on the blood moon 2027 and eclipses 2027 pages.

The special full moons of 2027 on one page

Put together, 2027 is a year of one clear supermoon, one seasonal blue moon and no blood moon. Mark the Wolf Moon supermoon of January 22, the Flower Moon of May 20 as the seasonal blue moon, the black moon of August 31, the Harvest Moon of September 15 to 16 and the Hunter’s Moon a month later. Every name, date and exact UTC time is in the 2027 full moon calendar, and you can add them all to your own calendar.