From Anika to Zelda: How do cyclones get their names?

As the Pacific braces for another cyclone season, have you ever wondered how tropical storms get their names?

Who decides what to call each of them? How do they choose the names?

And why do tropical storms with female names often end up being deadlier than those with male names?

Firstly, let’s address why some storms are called cyclones, while others are known as hurricanes or typhoons.

These three names are given to intense spiralling storms with winds of at least 119km per hour. What they’re known as depends on which ocean they form in.

They are called hurricanes when they form over the North Atlantic, central North Pacific and eastern North Pacific, and are labelled as typhoons when they form in the Northwest Pacific, affecting Asia.

If they form over the South Pacific or Indian Ocean, they are known as cyclones.

Most people are not very good at remembering points of latitude and longitude, so these intense storms are given names to make them easier to identify and give warnings about.

The naming system is also useful if there is more than one cyclone happening in the world at the same time.

An Australian meteorologist known as Clement Wragge is usually credited with being the first person to give storms names in the 1890s. So the story goes, he liked to name storms after women, mythical figures and politicians he did not like.

The naming system was formalised by the National Weather Service in the US in the 1950s.

An alphabetical list of female names was used for storms in the Atlantic until 1979, when it was pointed out that was sexist and male names should be added to the list.

Today, the World Meteorological Organisation maintains the lists of names that are used for tropical cyclones in different parts of the world.

These lists are different depending on the region, as are the rules for using them.

For example, tropical cyclones in the Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific are given names in alphabetical order, alternating between male and female names.

Some regions have six lists of names, others four or five. And those lists are used in rotation each year. So, if it’s a region that uses six different lists, for example, the list of names used in 2023 will be used again in 2029.

The World Meteorological Organisation says the common rule is that the names list is proposed by WMO members of a specific region which are then approved at annual or biennial meetings.

It also says the names must be “short, distinctive, and relevant to their cultural and geographic areas so that they are easy for people to remember”.

A name will be retired from a list if it’s been attached to a particularly deadly or damaging storm. This is then replaced with another name.

Some examples of names that have been removed from lists include Irma, Haiyan, Sandy, Katrina and Mitch.

A study from 2014 suggested hurricanes with female names tend to be more deadly because people assume storms with feminine names are less dangerous and therefore take fewer precautions.

The report said changing a hurricane’s name from Charley to Eloise could triple the death rate of that storm.

A particularly devastating tropical cyclone can have an impact on what people decide to name their children.

Back in 2017, the Social Security Administration in the US said the names Katrina, Sandy and Andrew all immediately lost favour after being attached to deadly storms.

The name Katrina especially tumbled in popularity in the US after Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,800 people and caused billions of dollars of damage in 2005. It dropped from 1327 people called Katrina in the US that year to 190 babies called Katrina in 2016.

A psychologist named Katrina Cochran once told NBC News she had to change her name for presentations in Florida and the Gulf Coast area after the hurricane hit the region.

She said people in those areas were still triggered 10 years after the hurricane.

“Even to this day, even 10 years later,” she said in 2015. “When I introduce myself there’s almost immediately a visceral reaction.”