How Typhoons and Hurricanes Are Named
A tropical cyclone is a large, rotating storm. Tropical cyclones on either side of the US are called "hurricanes," and those around East Asia are called "typhoons." In the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, they are just called "tropical cyclones."
Before the 20th century, these storms were usually named after the places they damaged or the saint's day on which they occurred – since every day of the year was named after a saint in the traditional Christian calendar.
Later, longitude and latitude were used to name tropical cyclones, but these were difficult to understand and say. In the early 1950s, America's National Hurricane Center tried using alphabetical code names, but these were also hard to understand.
In 1953, the Hurricane Center made a new list of women's names, a system that had been used by the US Navy during World War II, and which was easier to remember. Men's names were added in 1979 after women's groups complained that using only women's names was unfair.
Now, the names are managed by the World Meteorological Organization, which uses different lists for different parts of the world.
There are six alphabetical lists of 21 names used in the Atlantic, and six lists of 24 names for the US side of the Pacific. Every year starts at the letter A for the first storm, and after six years, the first list is used again.
The South China Sea and the Asian side of the Pacific use five lists of 28 names suggested by countries in the area. For example, "Hagibis" was suggested by the Philippines, and means "speed"; the next storm name, "Neoguri," was suggested by South Korea, and means "raccoon dog." Other names come from places, flowers, stars and even gods.
Any storm that causes a lot of damage is removed from the list. So "Katrina" was removed after it did terrible damage to New Orleans in 2005, and "Haiyan" was removed after thousands were killed in the Philippines in 2013.
