Month names of the Hijri, Hebrew and Solar Hijri calendars

The months of each calendar this site converts to, in order and in its own script. Two of these calendars do not have a fixed number of months, and one does not name its months at all — which is the part most month-name tables leave out.

Hijri (Umm al-Qura)

Twelve months, always, with no intercalation: the Hijri year is twelve lunar months and never thirteen. Each month is 29 or 30 days and which it is varies from year to year, so the lengths below are those of a single year rather than a repeating pattern.

Hebrew

Twelve months in a common year and thirteen in a leap year, the extra one being Adar I, inserted before the ordinary Adar — which is then called Adar II. Two further months, Heshvan and Kislev, take 29 or 30 days depending on the year, which is how the calendar makes the fine adjustments that keep its festivals off certain weekdays.

A common year has a single Adar, written אדר, in the slot Adar I occupies above. It is not the same month as Adar I, and which of the two a common-year Adar birthday is observed in is a question of practice rather than of arithmetic — the Hebrew age page works that through, with the convention this site applies stated on every row it affects.

Solar Hijri (Jalali)

Twelve months, always. The first six have 31 days, the next five have 30, and Esfand has 29 or 30 — the only month whose length varies, and the only place the calendar records a leap year.

Chinese lunisolar

The Chinese calendar does not name its months. They are numbered — first month, second month, and so on to the twelfth — and a leap month takes the number of the month it follows rather than a number of its own. A leap month after the second month is a second second month, not a thirteenth.

A month is 29 or 30 days according to when the new moon actually falls, so the lengths are observations rather than a rule. That is also why this site takes them from a published table rather than computing them.