Birthstones: The Origins and Myths Behind the Modern List
How the modern birthstones list took shape, from Aaron’s breastplate to the 1912 trade standard, with the legends behind each month's stone marked as legends.
Ask a stranger for the stone of their birth month and they will answer without hesitation, as if the list had always existed. It has not. The modern roster of birthstones was fixed by a trade association in 1912, drawing on a far older tradition that begins with a priest’s ceremonial garment in the Book of Exodus, passes through two ancient commentators, and reaches the jeweler’s counter by way of a folk custom whose origins scholars still debate. What follows is the record as it stands, with the legends marked as legends.
From Aaron’s Breastplate to the Months of the Year
The oldest thread is biblical. Exodus 28 describes a breastplate for Aaron, the high priest, set with twelve stones in four rows of three, one for each tribe of Israel. The stones are named in Hebrew, and translators have rendered the names differently over the centuries: sardius, topaz and carbuncle in the first row, and in the later rows emerald, sapphire, diamond, ligure, agate, amethyst, beryl, onyx and jasper in the King James Version. What the ancient Hebrew terms meant in mineralogical terms is uncertain, and gemologists caution that several of the names do not correspond to the stones we know by them today.
The step from tribes to months was taken by later writers. The first-century historian Flavius Josephus, in his account of the priestly vestments, linked the twelve stones to the twelve months of the year and to the signs of the zodiac. In the late fourth century, St. Jerome, who knew Josephus’s work, repeated the association in a letter on the vestments of the priesthood. Both men were interpreting scripture, not describing a custom of wearing a stone by birth date, and we should be careful not to read the modern habit back into them.
The custom of wearing one stone for one’s own month is younger. The New York gem authority George Frederick Kunz, writing in the early twentieth century, placed its emergence in eighteenth-century Poland, and that attribution is still repeated. Other researchers have argued for earlier German roots, perhaps in the sixteenth century. The honest summary is that the practice appears in Europe some centuries after Jerome, and that no one can name the first person who wore a garnet because it was January.
How the Modern Birthstones List Was Standardized
For a long time there was no single list. Regions, jewelers and almanacs gave different stones for the same month, and a ring bought in one city might be “wrong” in another. In 1912, at a convention in Kansas City, the American trade body then known as the National Association of Jewelers, a forerunner of today’s Jewelers of America, adopted an official list so that retailers and customers would share one. It gave garnet for January, amethyst for February, bloodstone and aquamarine for March, diamond for April, emerald for May, pearl and moonstone for June, ruby for July, sardonyx and peridot for August, sapphire for September, opal and tourmaline for October, topaz for November, and turquoise and lapis lazuli for December.
The list has been revised, but rarely. In 1952, the Jewelry Industry Council of America added alexandrite for June, citrine for November, tourmaline alongside opal for October, and zircon for December. In 2002, tanzanite joined December, a stone first described in Tanzania in the late 1960s. In 2016, the American Gem Trade Association and Jewelers of America added spinel as a second August stone beside peridot. Trade associations elsewhere keep their own lists, and Britain’s National Association of Goldsmiths issued its own in 1937, so a “birthstone” is, in the end, a convention, and a useful one.
Birthstones by Month: January Through June
January, garnet. The name is generally traced to the Latin for pomegranate, for the resemblance of small red crystals to its seeds. Legend has it that Noah hung a garnet lantern on the ark; it is a charming story and no more than that. Garnets, especially the Bohemian pyrope, filled the jewelry boxes of the nineteenth century.
February, amethyst. The Greek word amethystos, “not intoxicated,” gave the stone its name and its oldest legend: that a cup set with amethyst, or the stone worn on the body, protected against drunkenness. The story is a legend, and the etymology is the only solid part of it. Until large deposits were found in Brazil in the nineteenth century, amethyst ranked among the more costly colored stones, and the amethyst parures of the early 1800s reflect that standing.
March, aquamarine and bloodstone. Aquamarine, from the Latin for sea water, was long believed to be a sailor’s talisman, which is lore and not evidence. Bloodstone, a dark green chalcedony flecked with red, carries a medieval Christian legend that it took its spots from the blood of Christ at the Crucifixion.
April, diamond. From the Greek adamas, “unconquerable,” a word the ancients applied to hardness before they knew what a diamond was. The old cuts that give antique diamonds their character are a study of their own.
May, emerald. Egypt’s Red Sea workings supplied the ancient world, and Cleopatra is said to have loved the stone, a claim that rests on tradition rather than a surviving record. The Colombian stones that eventually displaced Egypt’s have a history of their own.
June, pearl, moonstone and alexandrite. Pearl, an organic gem formed within living mollusks, has long been associated with brides and with mourning alike. Moonstone owes its name to its shimmering sheen. Alexandrite, which shifts between green and red, was found in Russia’s Ural Mountains in the 1830s and named for the future Tsar Alexander II; tradition says the discovery coincided with his birthday, and that detail should be taken as tradition.
Birthstones by Month: July Through December
July, ruby. In the Sanskrit tradition rubies were called ratnaraj, the king of gems. The finest are discussed in our article on Burmese pigeon’s blood rubies, and period examples can be seen among our estate ruby rings.
August, peridot, sardonyx and spinel. Peridot has been called the “gem of the sun,” a title attached to it in the lore of ancient Egypt, where it was mined on an island in the Red Sea. Sardonyx, a banded stone, was prized by the Romans for seals and cameos. Spinel, newly official, was long mistaken for ruby; the great red stone in the front of Britain’s Imperial State Crown, the Black Prince’s Ruby, is a spinel.
September, sapphire. Blue sapphire has been tied to the sky, to loyalty and to the clergy for centuries, symbolism that belongs to tradition and not to science. For one famous origin, see the story of the Kashmir sapphire.
October, opal and tourmaline. Opal’s reputation as an unlucky stone is, in large part, literary. Sir Walter Scott’s 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein features a character whose opal appears to be linked to her misfortunes, and the book is often blamed for a decline in opal’s popularity in the nineteenth century. We separate what the record supports from what is legend in our full account of opal superstition. The Romans, by contrast, had prized the stone. Tourmaline’s name is generally traced to the Sinhalese turamali, a term applied to varied colored stones, and fits a gem that appears in nearly every color. For another stone that attracted superstition, read our piece on cursed diamonds.
November, topaz and citrine. The name topaz may derive from Topazios, a Greek name for the same Red Sea island that produced peridot, and some ancient “topaz” was probably peridot. Citrine, the yellow-to-orange quartz, was popular in the bolder jewelry of the 1940s.
December, turquoise, tanzanite and zircon. Turquoise reached Europe through Turkey, hence the French pierre turquoise, “Turkish stone.” Tanzanite, the newest of the group, was introduced to the market in the late 1960s. Zircon, an ancient gem unrelated to the synthetic cubic zirconia, completes the month.
Birth-Month Stones in Estate Jewelry
Because the official list is only a century old, antique sentimental jewelry predates it. A Georgian or Victorian piece set with a garnet may have been chosen for a birth month under a regional list, for the color, or for a meaning that had nothing to do with a calendar. The surest evidence of a stone chosen for meaning is the acrostic piece, in which the first letters of the stones spell a word: ruby, emerald, garnet, amethyst, ruby, diamond for “regard,” for example. We explore the form in the language of gemstones in acrostic jewelry.
A birth-month stone in an estate piece is often worth more as a clue than as a calendar entry. A pearl locket may mark a christening, a ruby ring a July birthday. We read such pieces carefully and do not assign a story that the object does not support.
Choosing a Birthstone Piece With Provenance
Two practical notes for the collector. First, period names were looser than ours: old inventories call many red stones rubies, and a stone sold as a ruby a century ago may today be identified as spinel, which is why we rely on laboratory reports where origin or identity matters. Second, the modern list is a guide, not a rule. A person born in September may prefer the green of an old Colombian emerald, and nothing in the long history above says they are wrong.
For a place to begin, browse our estate emerald rings for May, our antique pearl necklaces for June, or our broader range of vintage and estate jewelry. Each piece is one of one, authenticated and documented. If a particular stone has caught your eye, we would be glad to show it to you privately: request a private viewing.
Header photograph: gimmel (twin) ring, second half of the sixteenth century, gold, enamel, rubies and emerald. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Lesley and Emma Sheafer Collection, Bequest of Emma A. Sheafer, 1973 (1974.356.649). Public domain, Open Access (CC0); cropped to fit the page. A museum object, shown for context; not VERANE stock.