Amazingly it has only been in the last half of the twentieth century that people have been naming hurricanes. They had to devise a system for how hurricanes are named. With so many of these storms circling the earth along with typhoons and cyclones and it had to be named in a simple way. This is when they started a uniformed system to fill this need not only for one country but for all.
Every country around the world had different ways of naming hurricanes. The West Indies named their hurricanes for the saint’s day that the hurricane happened. In Australia they named hurricanes for people that were disliked in politics. During the war the Pacific and Atlantic storms were named after the enlisted men’s wives and girlfriends. In 1953 the National Weather Service started naming the hurricanes after women in general but in 1979 they finally started naming hurricanes after men and women. Most other countries followed this at the time.
At present time hurricanes are named by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and they are responsible for naming all hurricanes around the world. They have six lists of both men’s and women’s names that began with each letter of the alphabet, excluding the letters Q, U, and Z. The list changes every six years. This system is a very democratic system and is used in over 120 countries around the world. When a new name is introduced there is a process of nominating and voting to select it.
They use French , English or Spanish for any Atlantic storms that come on the scene, these can be any name ranging from “Bill” to a name as fancy as” Paloma.” The Atlantic and Pacific have different names. Storms that happen in the Atlantic or the east part of the Pacific are called hurricanes while those that happen in the western part of the Pacific or the Philippines are called typhoons. Cyclone is the name that is used in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean but any storm that hits an Asian country are usually given Asian names.
When they have used up all the names they have selected on the list, the WMO will move to the Greek Alphabet but when a hurricane hits really hard such as Katrina the name is retired completely from the list. Over the years there have been approximately seventy names retired from the hurricane list. When a name is retired it is replaced by another name. the reasons name are retired is that they have been so destructive and cost such a high loss of life that to keep using it would be very negative for the public.
It use to be that if the storm went from one part of the country to another they would change the name, for example, in 1989 when one system moved from the Northeast pacific to the Atlantic it was renamed from Cosme to Allison. Today storms keep their original names.
Further reading:
Why and how do hurricanes form?
