According to Genesis, what was the first month named in the flood narrative?

According to Genesis, the Flood’s rain began in the second month of Noah’s six-hundredth year.

Genesis 7:11 identifies the date as the seventeenth day of the second month. This is the first numbered month explicitly used for the Flood’s onset in the narrative. Genesis does not use the later familiar names Nisan or Tishri in this passage; it simply gives the month number.

The chronology continues with several other markers. The Ark comes to rest in the seventh month, the mountain tops become visible in the tenth month, and Noah eventually leaves the Ark in the second month of his six-hundred-first year. These dates show that the story describes a period much longer than the forty days of rain.

Readers sometimes answer “the first month” because the Flood narrative later reaches a new year. However, the rain begins on the seventeenth day of the second month, making “the second month” the precise answer to this question.