August Birthstone: Meaning, Stones, and How to Choose

August gold has a green underside, the shade of fields that have drunk a whole summer, and peridot owns that exact color. The gem is born absurdly deep, crystallizing in the mantle and hitching up through volcanoes; a few stones have even fallen from the sky inside pallasite meteorites, green crystals suspended in iron. Hold a peridot at arm's length in late afternoon and notice the oily, golden flash inside the green; Egyptian miners on Zabargad Island reportedly worked at dusk because the stone was said to show itself like a lamp in low light. August keeps generous company besides: sardonyx, the banded elder that held the month first, and spinel, the great impersonator that spent centuries passing as ruby in the crowns of Europe before 2016 finally gave it a month of its own. Three stones, three temperaments, one month with options.

Every stone named on this page links to its full profile in the crystal encyclopedia, and if you want your whole birth date read at once, zodiac, birthstone, and life-path number together, the Crystal Birthday Pairing tool does exactly that.

The August Birthstone: Peridot

Modern (1912 Jewelers of America list)

Peridot leads August on the modern list, the green of late summer fields just before they turn. It is one of the few gems with its color built into the mineral itself, olivine green at every size, and one of the fewer still that form in the earth's mantle rather than the crust. August's stone arrives from deeper down than almost anything else you could wear.

Sardonyx, the month's original list holder, and spinel, the 2016 addition, share August officially.

Read the full Peridot profileShop Peridot

Other August Stones Across the Traditions

Where the August Birthstone Comes From

August's roster shows the calendar's whole machinery in one month. The traditional stone was sardonyx, the red and white banded chalcedony of Roman signet rings, and when the American National Association of Jewelers standardized the list at Kansas City in 1912, August carried sardonyx with peridot beside it; across the century the green stone simply outsold the banded one into first place. Then in 2016, Jewelers of America and the American Gem Trade Association added spinel, the calendar's newest stone, righting an old case of mistaken identity: the Black Prince's Ruby in the British Imperial State Crown, fourteenth century plunder and Tudor treasure, is in fact a great red spinel, and the trade finally gave the honest stone its own honest month. Peridot's deeper history runs through Zabargad Island in the Red Sea, which supplied Egypt's treasuries with the green gem for roughly three thousand years.

How to Choose Your August Stone

Match the stone to the wearing life. Peridot at 6.5 to 7 on the Mohs scale suits earrings, pendants, and careful rings, and its green flatters gold settings especially. Spinel runs harder at 8 and comes in red, pink, lavender, and steel blue, the best choice for an everyday ring with history in its pocket. Sardonyx is the budget heirloom, the stone of carved signets, ideal if you like your jewelry with Roman manners. Leo birthdays through the twenty second can add onyx from the older zodiac tables; Virgo birthdays from the twenty third look ahead to sapphire. Choose by hand, not just by chart.

Related Birthstones

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