Storm Names: the Origin of the Hurricane Naming Process

Unlike natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, hurricanes are given the distinction of being named. The process of naming storms arose as a method for maintaining organization. Tropical storms may occur in at the same time in different areas of the ocean. In order to track and report on simultaneous storms the naming system was developed.

First Official Name Usage
Storms first received names in 1951. Before this time, West Indian nations applied the names of saint’s days to storms. In 1951 the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was used. IPA was created as a standard representation of spoken language and is based on the Latin alphabet. The 1951 storm names were Able, Baker, Charlie and so forth. In 1953 the personal names began to be used.

Coverage Area
Storms occur in the Pacific (central and eastern) and Atlantic, which includes the eastern and western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. The Pacific and Atlantic use separate lists of names. The first storms in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific receive a name beginning with the letter ‘A’.

Names
In 1979 changes were made so that names alternated between male and female. Before this year, all storm names were female. In addition this year saw the introduction of English, Spanish and French name use in the Atlantic as a representation of the languages spoken by the nations of the region. The World Metrological Association uses six lists of names in rotation every six years. New names are added only when a storm name is retired.

Retirement
Since hurricanes can cause death and catastrophic destruction, the National Hurricane center accepts requests from victims for the storm name to be retired. About 50 names have been retired. The names do not reflect the most damaging storms on record; however, since name tracking only began in the 1950s.

To learn more about hurricane tracking and preparedness and sign up for email alerts and to view the lists of names into 2012, visit the National Hurricane Center at www.nhc.noaa.gov.