# Do you own items or wear jewlery with your birthstone? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 27, 2012, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182 "2012-04-27T21:32:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/21 "2012-04-28T03:54:20Z")
No. That’s partially because I don’t particularly care for aquamarine, and partially because I don’t really wear any jewelry. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/22 "2012-04-28T10:33:51Z")
There are several traditions based on the month or the zodiacal sign of the sun on the date of birth; [The Official Birthstone System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthstones) is about 100 years old. > [@](#): > > The first century Jewish historian Josephus proclaimed a connection between the twelve stones in Aaron’s breastplate, the twelve months of the year and the twelve signs of the zodiac… St. Jerome, referencing Josephus, said the Foundation Stones of the New Jerusalem (Revelations 21:19–20) would be appropriate for Christians to use… Wearing a single birthstone is only a few centuries old, although modern authorities differ on dates… > > Modern lists of birthstones have little to do with either the breastplate or the Foundation Stones of Christianity. Tastes, customs and confusing translations have distanced them from their historical origins, with one author calling the 1912 Kansas list “nothing but a piece of unfounded salesmanship.” The link above shows several different birthstone systems. In Britain, rock crystal is an alternative to the overpriced diamond. The list of zodiacal stones is simplistic; there are many others. (Trust me; I wouldn’t use astrology for anything more important than suggesting jewelry options.) My jewelry is mostly silver & the stones are usually “semiprecious.” I do treasure the ring with small, lovely rubies, but I’ve cultivated garnets since they are cheaper; imagine my surprise when I discovered that they come in many colors! Generally, I wear what suits my mood… ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/23 "2012-04-28T11:27:57Z")
Mine is sapphire. It would be my favorite gem anyway, because blue has been my favorite color my entire life (pre-dating my knowledge of the existence of birthstones). I don’t wear any jewelry these days, but growing up I had a few birthstone trinkets that an aunt or grandma gave me. If I were to get an engagement ring or the like as an adult, I’d want it to be a blue sapphire. My sister has a diamond birthstone. Cubic zirconia fits the bill perfectly fine, though, especially for a little kid. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/24 "2012-04-28T13:10:46Z")
My birthstone is amethyst. I have a couple of rings and a necklace, all of which I’d probably have even if it weren’t my birthstone because it’s cheap, it’s pretty, and I love me some purple. My daughter’s birthstone is diamond. She has a nice pair of earrings that a friend of mine bought her for her 10th(!) birthday, which she never wears because she’s afraid she’ll lose them. We’re CZ people, really. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/25 "2012-04-28T13:58:15Z")
September here – heck yes do I like my sapphires. I also like the fact they come in loads of different colors. The future Mr Boods knows he can’t go wrong for all subsequent gift-giving occasions. He was criticised by someone when he gave me a sapphire ring as an engagement ring [she asked him shrilly why he didn’t give me a diamond. I don’t like diamonds.] but shrugged, and said, ‘I have been trained.’ The first jewelry Valentine he gave me was a pair of sapphire earrings so I decided to keep him. I have had my ears pierced to match my birthdate (thank God it wasn’t the 30th or something), and have a small sapphire stud in each one. Silly? Sure. But you can have the ring made from the sapphire stud that was part of my great-grandfather’s cravat pin (which was probably bought by his father around 1865) when you pry it off my cold, dead fingers. Hey, that’s how I had to get it from the old man. ---
**Author:** ![gwendee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@gwendee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gwendee)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/26 "2012-04-28T14:13:45Z")
[QUOTE=Bridget Burke’s Link] Wear a sardonyx or for thee, No conjugal felicity; The August-born without this stone, `Tis said, must live unloved and lone. [/QUOTE] Well, this certainly explains some stuff. My great aunt, also born in August did wear a sardonyx ring for her whole life, until near the end when the stone was lost. I have the setting and have long intended to replace it and wear the ring, but nonsense like car repairs and dentistry keep cropping up conspiring to keep me sardonyx free. The same aunt, who embraced the change to peridot when that happened, is the source of several of the peridot pieces that I have. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/27 "2012-04-28T14:57:38Z")
My birthstone is diamond in April (today, actually!) and oddly enough I am one of those anti-diamond people so I would not own jewelry with my actual birthstone on it. However I remember thinking as a kid (before I could even fathom a real diamond or its price) that I was lucky that my birthstone was so versatile. I thought it would suck to have favorite red or green or blue birthstone jewelry that you could only wear with something that matched it. I don’t have any fake diamond specifically-for-my-birthstone jewelry at the moment, but I do like that it’s my stone. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Girlfriend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.girlfriend/32/193_2.png) [@Dr.Girlfriend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Girlfriend)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/28 "2012-04-28T15:11:19Z")
Happy birthday **ZipperJJ**! I’m an August baby, and I own several peridot pieces. I love the color, I’m a redhead who wears a lot of green. My sister is an April baby, she has complained about her birthstone being so expensive. Both of her girls were born in September, and last year for Christmas her husband got her a ring with a “diamond” surrounded by two sapphires. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/29 "2012-04-28T15:13:31Z")
Lots of pearls. Not necessarily because they’re my birth"stone", but that fact makes it nicer. I love pearls a lot, except for freshwater ones, for stupid personal reasons. ETA: Based on that link, my zodiac stone is Emerald, which happens to be my favorite gem. ---
**Author:** ![Taters](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/taters/32/2845_2.png) [@Taters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taters)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/30 "2012-04-28T15:19:40Z")
My birthstone is the emerald and I wear an emerald ring that my husband gave me every day. I have some necklaces and I think another ring or two with emeralds (given to me by my mother), but I rarely, if ever wear them. I do happen to really like emeralds. I think they’re pretty. I don’t wear much jewelry overall anyway. I wear my wedding ring, the emerald ring, and usually, a diamond pendant necklace my husband gave me. Sometimes I swap out my necklace for others, but that’s the extent of the jewelry I wear. ---
**Author:** ![Tamex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@Tamex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamex)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/31 "2012-04-28T16:21:06Z")
> [@bouv](#): > > November is yellow topaz…might as well be called a pukestone. > > Ugly. > > As. > > Shit. > > So no…but I’m also a guy, so it’s not like wearing jewelry is a big thing for us. I mean…plenty of guys do, even discounting wedding rings, but it’s like an order of magnitude less than woman. I did get a class ring in high school, but I go some random green stone (not an emerald, some synthetic thing) because it looked cool. Yeah, I bet November’s isn’t very popular at all. If I had been born a week earlier, I could have had opal, which would have been awesome! Never gone for “mother’s rings”, either (where a mother wears a ring with the birthstones of all her children) because, for my mother, that would doom her to my puketacular topaz and my sister’s rather plain and expensive April diamond. For myself, I only have one daughter, and she was born in November, too! Bleah! ---
**Author:** ![chloes1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@chloes1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chloes1)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/32 "2012-04-28T17:12:23Z")
I thoroughly detest Topaz as well! Although I do have a pair of earrings with that stone somewhere… ---
**Author:** ![Missy2U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Missy2U](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Missy2U)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/33 "2012-04-28T17:56:48Z")
I have a mother’s necklace and mother’s ring - they aren’t birthstones, they’re diamonds - and just show a mother and child. I do have a mother’s pin, however, that has my son’s, my stepson’s, and my husband’s birthstones hanging from it, and I have my birthstone on a necklace from my son. (I have three “charms” hanging from one necklace I always wear - one is the mother and child necklace charm I mentioned above, one is my birthstone my son got me, and the other is a shiny “diamond” one my son got me - they’re all on the same chain. Keeps them from tangling.) I have been thinking about getting my mother’s, father’s, and mother in law’s as an addition to my necklace - but I may go towards rings. Haven’t decided yet. ---
**Author:** ![percypercy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@percypercy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/percypercy)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/34 "2012-04-28T18:06:56Z")
My birthstone is Amethyst, and I detest it though I really don’t have anything against purple in general. My mom’s is Peridot, I quite like it, I have a necklace with a little peridot stone in it. ---
**Author:** ![Pai325](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pai325](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pai325)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/35 "2012-04-28T18:42:05Z")
Im also November and dislike topaz. My daughter, however, was born in March, so I have a nice aquamarine ring I wear that she can have when I’m gone. I went to a jeweler once to see about getting a ring with the letters of her name, like the Victorians did with JOY (something with a J, Opal, Yellow Topaz), but my daughter’s name had some unusual letters so I didn’t know what it would look like. I should have named her Tess. (for this I’d get a Topaz, Emerald, Sapphire, Sapphire). ---
**Author:** ![tumbleddown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/36 "2012-04-28T18:54:58Z")
Today’s my birthday, too, (happy our-day **ZipperJJ**!) and I like diamonds, but I dislike where they come from and the political ramifications, so buying new isn’t something I’d be interested in even if I did have the cash on hand that wasn’t set for something more practical, like a new laptop. I did have a ring, though, a tasteful little right hand ring with .75 carats, which was a gift from my grandpa for my 21st birthday, but that was stolen. Since then I’ve had a lot of things that look like my diamonds but are merely simulacra. My aunt recently found some small diamond earrings (probably .125 carat each) of my grandmother’s that were thought destroyed in a house fire, though, and promised them to me, today, actually, so we’ll see if that happens. ---
**Author:** ![Jennyrosity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/2bfe46/32.png) [@Jennyrosity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennyrosity)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/37 "2012-04-28T19:07:19Z")
I’m a September baby, so my husband got me a sapphire necklace for my 30th When he told them what he was doing, my mum and grandma got me a sapphire ring and earrings to match. My mum’s February, and I’ve got her a few amethyst pieces over the years, and I’ve just given my cousin a diamond pendant for her 30th. So I guess it’s a bit of thing for me! ---
**Author:** ![Teacake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Teacake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teacake)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2012, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/38 "2012-04-28T21:53:51Z")
When my goddaughter was born in April, I looked up her birthstone and had a small heart attack, then went to a pawn broker and found a nice ring with I think five tiny diamonds which I lent to her mother to use as a breastfeeding ring (swapping hands to help her remember which “side” she’d used last feed - she had been using an elastic band) and keep safe until the child is old enough to take possession of her diamond ring. I probably wouldn’t have done that if she’d been a boy. ---
**Author:** ![PandaBear77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@PandaBear77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PandaBear77)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2012, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/39 "2012-04-29T00:20:27Z")
My birthstone is a sapphire. My engagement ring is a sapphire and diamond band. ---
**Author:** ![jabiru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbce88/32.png) [@jabiru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jabiru)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2012, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182/40 "2012-04-29T00:56:23Z")
What’s the birthstone for July? Both my boys were born in July and I’d never heard of a ‘mothers ring’ until this thread. If it’s an OK stone, I might get one of these, since I don’t wear my own birthstone. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-own-items-or-wear-jewlery-with-your-birthstone/620182.md?page=3)