Snow Moon, Strawberry Moon: Where do these nicknames for full moons come from?

If you look up at the sky this Wednesday evening, February 12, you might see the Snow Moon. This will be the second full Moon of the year 2025 after the Wolf Moon in January . Where do these names come from, which have become popular over the years?

According to a January article on the NASA website, these are Native American names for full moons. They were made popular by being published in the Maine Farmers' Almanac, an American almanac for predicting weather and astronomy, starting in the 1930s. Over time, these names became widely known and used, according to NASA.

"Many of the Moon's nicknames come to us from Native American culture, because for their way of life, the cycles of the lunar phases were just as important a method of measuring time as the longer solar cycle of the year (from which the modern Gregorian calendar is derived)," the Royal Greenwich Museum, which houses the British Greenwich Astronomical Observatory, also explains on its website .

For example, some Native American tribes called the second full moon of the year the Snow Moon because it occurred in the dead of winter , when North America can experience heavy snowfall, according to NASA . It is also called the Hunger Moon because "bad weather and heavy snowfall made hunting difficult," the agency explains.

"The number of moon names differs slightly between tribes, but many assign 12 or 13 full moons to the year. These names were later adopted by American colonists and entered popular culture," says the Royal Greenwich Museum.

In January, the Wolf Moon comes from the "howls of hungry wolves complaining about the lack of food in the dead of winter," according to the same source. And in March, Native Americans speak of the Worm Moon, "referring to the tracks of worms that appeared on the freshly thawed ground." In June, the Strawberry Moon comes from the harvest of that red fruit. A full Moon , when the face of the Moon visible from Earth is fully illuminated by the Sun, occurs approximately every 29.5 days.