This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Haab Months gathers all eighteen twenty day months of the Haab, the Maya 365 day solar calendar, the count that runs alongside the five day remainder Wayeb rather than as a nineteenth month.
Every month is counted zero to nineteen rather than one to twenty, its opening day the seating of the month, so the year begins at 0 Pop, glossed as mat, the woven seat of authority. The names reach the atlas in the colonial Yucatec spelling Diego de Landa recorded in the sixteenth century and in the books of Chilam Balam, a transmission the atlas notes explicitly, since phonemic study of the month glyphs shows the names varied by region and period before that colonial fixing.
Four consecutive months, Chen, Yax, Sak and Keh, carry the four Maya directional colours in sequence, black, green or blue or new, white and red, though no source explains why they fall where they do and the second element attached to each is a reconstruction rather than secure. Animal names vary sharply in confidence: Sotz, bat, and Muwan, owl, are among the better founded readings because the glyph shows the creature named; Sek, generally glossed death, is among the weaker, since the colonial form and the Classic period glyph do not map cleanly together.
Kumku, the eighteenth and last month, carries particular weight: the Long Count's mythic creation date, the zero point the whole continuous count runs from, is written 4 Ajaw 8 Kumku, the one Haab position any account of Maya time reckoning has to name. Because the Haab carried no leap day correction, it drifted against the solar year by roughly a day every four years, so any agricultural sense once carried by a name such as Pax, planting time, would have slipped out of season within a few generations.