Why call it a Beaver Moon?

 

Why call it a Beaver Moon?

The beaver moon obtained its name for two main reasons.

In North America, it was referred to as the beaver moon as it was the time of year where beavers started to hibernate.

Beavers have their stock of food ready for the winter, and they begin to take shelter.

The other reason is for their fur. Humans would lay traps to catch the beavers at this time of year as they are fully grown.

This meant that more fur could be taken from the beavers if caught compared to any other time of the year.

Today, we use many of these ancient month names as Full Moon names. A common explanation is that Colonial Americans adopted many of the Native American names and incorporated them into the modern calendar.

However, it seems that it is a combination of Native American, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic month names which gave birth to the names commonly used for the Full Moon today.

Some years have 13 Full Moons, which makes one of them a Blue Moon, as it doesn't quite fit in with the traditional Full Moon naming system. However, this is not the only definition of a Blue Moon.