The practice of wearing and giving birthstones has a long, long history that dates way back to ancient Jewish tradition. I’ll spend some more time writing about that ancient, Jewish-Greek-Roman-Medieval history in another post, but the idea of birthstones as we know them today really dates back to about the mid-1800s.

Up until the mid-1800s only really wealthy people could afford to own and give gemstones as presents, but in the late-1800s the famous New York jewelry store Tiffany & Co started marketing birthstone jewelry to middle-class consumers. At that time, birthstones were called “natal stones” and each gemstone was associated with a certain virtue. Tiffany & Co published pamphlets with cute Victorian poems and sales of birthstone jewelry soared. Here’s one of the first poems published by Tiffany & Co for the birthstone for my birth month:

Chrysolite on sweet September’s brow we bind,
Lest some folly or enchantment cloud her mind.
Tiffany & Co., 1892

This poem illustrates a couple of issues that come up when researching birthstone history. The first issue is about the names of gemstones. Chrysolite is an old term for the gemstone peridot, and peridot is a good example because it has also been confused with a lot of other green to yellowish-green gemstones including emerald and topaz. Practically every gemstone has been called by many other names and confused with other gemstones. The one exception that I can think of is amethyst, which seems to have been clearly identified in even early Greek writings.

The other issue is about what gemstone stands for what month. When Tiffany & Co wrote this poem in 1892 they listed chrysolite as the birthstone for September, but today we know sapphire as the birthstone for September and peridot as the birthstone for the month of August. The list of birthstones—of what gemstone stands for what month—has changed a lot. Even today different countries have different lists.

In 1912 the Jewelers of America (JA), which was then known as the National Association of Jewelers, created an official list of modern birthstones. This list has been updated over the last hundred years or so, with the notable inclusion in 2002 of tanzanite as an additional birthstone for the month of December. JA is still the official keeper of the list of modern birthstones.