Do birthstones actually mean anything?

The list most people mean by birthstones was agreed by a jewelry trade association in Kansas City in 1912, and stones have been added to it since. That does not make it meaningless. It does mean the meaning is a shared convention rather than a property of the rock.

I looked this up because I was about to buy someone a birthstone piece and felt slightly silly about it, as if I were buying into something I did not believe. What I found made me more comfortable, not less, but not for the reason the gift guides give.

Where the list came from

The old part is genuinely old. The book of Exodus describes a breastplate set with twelve stones, and in the first century the historian Josephus connected those twelve to the twelve months and the twelve signs of the zodiac. That connection is where the idea of a stone belonging to a month begins.

What came between then and now is less tidy than most articles suggest. Wearing a single stone for your own birth month, rather than owning all twelve and rotating them, is a later custom, and the sources I could find do not agree on when or where it started. I have left that part out rather than repeat a date I cannot stand behind.

The modern list is easier to date. In August 1912 the American National Association of Jewelers, now Jewelers of America, met in Kansas City and adopted a standard list. The trade has revised it since: alexandrite, citrine, tourmaline and zircon were added in the 1950s, tanzanite was added to December in 2002, and spinel was added to August in 2016. History as recorded in Wikipedia's summary of birthstones.

The twelve months

Britain keeps its own list, standardised separately by the National Association of Goldsmiths in 1937, so a British chart and an American one will not always match. Sources also disagree on whether the mid-century revision happened in 1952 or 1957. If you are buying a gift, check which list the recipient grew up with before you check anything else.

What the meanings are worth

Every birthstone page you will read assigns qualities to each stone. Amethyst for clarity, garnet for protection, opal for hope. Those associations are centuries old in some cases and invented for catalogues in others, and there is no way to tell them apart by looking.

None of them is a tested property. No gemstone has been shown to affect health, luck, energy or protection, and anyone selling you one on that basis is selling you the story rather than the stone. I would be wary of a jeweller who says otherwise, for the same reason I would be wary of one who calls a plated piece solid gold.

What is real is the part that does not need testing. A stone that stands for the month someone was born gives a piece of jewelry a reason to exist beyond the look of it, and that is why birthstone gifts land. The meaning is something two people agree on, which is the only kind of meaning a gift ever has.

What to check before buying one

• Natural, lab-grown or imitation. All three are sold as birthstones and the price gap between them is enormous. A seller who will not say which one it is has told you which one it is.
• Which list. June has three stones and December has three; the one on the chart in the shop may not be the one the recipient thinks of as theirs.
• How it is set. A stone that falls out is the usual way a birthstone piece ends its life, and a claw setting on an everyday piece asks for more care than most people give it.
• The softer stones. Opal, pearl and turquoise mark and scratch more easily than the others, and none of them likes perfume, chlorine or being left in a bathroom.

If you like the idea but not the stone

This is where I landed. I wanted the thought behind a birthstone without a gemstone I would be nervous about wearing to work, and there is more than one way to mark a person in a piece.

• A shape chosen for the person rather than the month. Our guide to jewelry by star sign sorts the twelve signs into four elements and suggests a direction for each, which is the same symbolic gesture without a stone to look after.
• The colour rather than the stone. A deep green for May or a cool blue for March carries the reference at a glance, and nobody is checking whether it is an emerald.
• A pearl-effect bead rather than a pearl, if June is the month in question. It behaves like metal and asks nothing special of you. SIAFRA sells these and calls them pearl-effect, because they are not cultured pearls and saying so is cheaper than being caught.

SIAFRA does not sell gemstones at all. Every piece is stainless steel with a gold or silver tone finish, which is a limitation rather than a position, and it is why there is no birthstone collection at the end of this article to click through to. Full details of what the pieces are made from are at specifications.