How and Why Do They Name Hurricanes and Who Picks the Name?

Arlene, Cindy, Emily, Farrah, Katia. These are not, as you might expect, the names of women who were considered for Mambo No. 5, but rather the names of hurricanes, cyclones, typhoons, and other tropical storms. The practice of giving storms human names is now an accepted part of life, with the names of particularly destructive and deadly storms like Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, and Andrew burned into the memories of those who witnessed their wrath. But how did this practice get started? And who actually chooses the names – and how? Well, board up your windows and hunker in your storm cellar as we dive into the curious history and process of naming storms.

Now, before we get started, let’s answer a common question: what is the difference between a tropical storm, hurricane, cyclone, and typhoon? The answer, surprisingly, is almost nothing – they are all the same kind of rotating weather system, generically known as a tropical cyclone. The only difference between them is in strength and location. A weather system only becomes a tropical storm when it reaches sustained wind speeds of at least 39 miles per hour or 62 kilometres per hour. It then only becomes a hurricane, typhoon, or cyclone if winds reach 74 miles per hour or 118 kilometres per hour. And while the term cyclone is retained for storms in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, Atlantic and Northeast Pacific cyclones are known as hurricanes and northwest Pacific cyclones as typhoons. And now you know.

Tropical storms have been given names since at least the 18th century, though the practice was largely arbitrary and haphazard. For example, “Antje’s Hurricane” of 1842 was named after the ship HMS Antje, whose mast was ripped off by the storm. Other storms were named for where they made landfall – for example, the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 – while in the Caribbean they were named after the particular saint’s day on which they occurred – for example, Hurricane Santa Ana, which struck Puerto Rico on July 26, 1825. If two or more hurricanes occurred on the same day of the year, a number was added to the name, with Hurricane San Felipe the First and Second striking Puerto Rico on September 13 of 1876 and 1928, respectively.

The first person to systematically name tropical storms was Clement Wragge, a meteorologist working for the government of Queensland, Australia in the late 19th century. At first Wragge used letters of the Greek alphabet, but soon moved on to figures from Polynesian mythology, ancient historical figures like Xerxes and Hannibal, and – most amusingly – unpopular Australian politicians like James Drake, Edmund Barton, and Alfred Deakin, whom Wragge characterized as erratic and destructive like cyclones. Unfortunately for Wragge, this cheeky naming scheme backfired when, in 1902, a cyclone he named after politician Alfred Conroy caused considerable damage in his home state of Queensland. Wragge soon found his funding slashed, and finally retired from his post in 1907 – and with him, so too did the practice of naming storms.

For the next 40 years, tropical storms were simply designated by their strength and current position – for example, Category 3 at 30.4 degrees North and 71.8 degrees West. But this system was cumbersome and often led to confusion, so during the Second World War meteorologists began naming storms after wives, girlfriends, or female celebrities. This, in turn, was inspired by the popular 1941 novel Storm by George R. Stewart, in which the titular weather system is named “Maria.” Otherwise, however, naming storms remained a largely informal practice. For example, when in 1949 a Category 2 Hurricane struck Florida during a visit by President Harry S. Truman, it was dubbed “Hurricane Harry.”

In 1951, the U.S. Weather Bureau – now the U.S. National Weather Service – tried to formalize the naming process by naming storms sequentially after letters of the military phonetic alphabet, starting with Able for the first storm of the year and proceeding through Baker, Charlie, Dog, and so on. Just two years later, however, this alphabet was supplanted by the now-standard NATO phonetic alphabet of Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and the Weather Bureau abandoned this scheme in favour of giving hurricanes female names in alphabetical order. This remained the accepted convention until the later 1970s, when the practice came under fire from feminist groups for being sexist. As one letter to the National Weather Service from the National Organization for Women read:

“Women are human beings and deeply resent being arbitrarily associated with disaster.”

As a result, in 1979 meteorologists began alternating between men’s and women’s names. Progress!

Today, the naming of tropical storms is the responsibility of the World Meteorological Organization or WMO, which maintains separate, standardized lists of names for different regions such as the South Atlantic, North Pacific, and Indian Ocean. There are six separate lists for the Atlantic region, which are cycled through every six years. Thus, the list used in 2023, which starts with Arlene and ends with Whitney, will be used again in 2029. The names on these lists have no particular meaning, and are chosen to be easy to pronounce and remember. They are also tailored to the culture of each particular region – for example, Jal and Bulbul in the Indian Ocean, Saomai and Bebinca in the South China Sea, and Moke and Walaka in the Central Pacific.

Finally, names starting with W, U, X, Y, and Z are not used, meaning each list has only 21 names. But what happens if there are more than 21 major storms in a season? This is a highly unlikely occurrence. As previously covered, tropical weather systems only become tropical storms – and receive names – when they reach sustained wind speeds of at least 39 miles per hour or 62 kilometres per hour. As this happens relatively infrequently, the regular 21-name lists are usually more than adequate. But for the rare cases where there is spillover, the WMO maintains alternative naming lists. Originally, this was simply the Greek Alphabet – the system pioneered by Clement Wragge in the 1890s. But the large number of similar-sounding letters such as Eta, Zeta, and Theta often led to confusion, so in 2021 this was replaced by a backup list of regular names – with the Atlantic list starting with Adria and ending with Will and the Northeast Pacific list starting with Aidan and ending with Zoe. But the primary list has only been exceeded twice in the past 15 years – once in 2015 and again in 2020.

But while the naming lists are standardized, they are not set in stone, and names can be – and often are – retired for a variety of reasons. For example, names of particularly destructive and deadly storms are retired out of respect for the victims. Therefore, there will never be another hurricane Harvey, Ian, Ida, Irma, Fiona, Floyd, Katrina, Maria, Nate, or Sandy, these names having been replaced with Harold, Idris, Imani, Idalia, Farrah, Franklin, Katia, Margot, Nigel, and Sara. However, there are no hard and fast rules for retiring a name, the decision being made by a vote at the annual meeting of the WMO’s Regional Association IV Hurricane Committee. Names can also be retired for other reasons; for example, in 2015 the name “Isis” – previously associated with the Ancient Egyptian goddess – was retired due to its association with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – now the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or simply the “Islamic State”. And in 1966, the name “Freida” was replaced with “Fern” with no explanation given. In total, 94 names have been retired by the WMO since 1953.

While the names of hurricanes and other cyclones are intended to be neutral and non-descriptive, there is evidence they may actually have a very real impact on the deadliness of these storms. In 2014, a study led by Kiju Jung, a doctoral student in marketing at the University of Illinois College of Business, found that, statistically speaking, hurricanes with female names are deadlier than those with male names. As to why, Jung posits that this effect results from people taking female-named hurricanes less seriously and thus taking fewer precautions. This, in turn, by this hypothesis results in higher casualties. But while presenting a plausible hypothesis, this study has been the subject of considerable criticism. For while the study examines all hurricanes which made landfall in the United States between 1950 and 2012, as we’ve previously covered, all hurricanes were given female names prior to 1979, potentially skewing the statistical analysis. Whatever the case, the lesson is clear: if a hurricane is headed your way, always take the proper precaution. Even if its name is Monica, Erica, Rita, Tina, Sandra, Mary, or Jessica here I am. A little bit of you… destroys coastal cities apparently.

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