How Do Hurricanes Get Their Names?

2020 has been a challenging year. We don’t know what the second half will bring. The way things are going, it could be Godzilla, it could be aliens. Maybe we’ll be lucky, and it will just be hurricanes.

In fact, we’re smack in the middle of hurricane season in the U.S.—it runs from July to September in the Northern Hemisphere and January to March in the Southern Hemisphere. With that in mind, we started thinking about how hurricanes and other storms get their names. 

Hurricanes = typhoons = tropical cyclones

First of all, hurricanes themselves are called different things in different parts of the world. When they form in the North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific they’re called “hurricanes.” If they form in the western North Pacific near China, Japan, and the Philippines, they’re called “typhoons.” And if they form in the western South Pacific or Indian Ocean, they’re called “tropical cyclones.”

Regardless of the name, they’re all the same—spinning storms that start over tropical waters. They have high winds of 74 mph or more, heavy rain, and storm surges. These surges can raise ocean waters up to 20 feet above normal. Needless to say, hurricanes present a deadly threat to people in coastal communities.

Hurricanes were first named after the place they landed

Humans have undoubtedly suffered because of hurricanes since our earliest days. And back then, we simply called them by the name of wherever they hit. Thus we have the Hakata Bay Typhoon of 1281, the Calcutta Cyclone of 1737, and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.

The Calcutta Cyclone was one of the deadliest in history. It threw a 40-foot storm surge into the Ganges River Delta, destroying 20,000 ships and killing more than 300,000 people. The Galveston Hurricane is the worst in U.S. history. It sent water surging 15 feet high, swallowing Galveston Island and the Texas coast, and killing some 8,000 people.

A hurricane near Japan inspired the term ‘kamikaze’

The Hakata Bay Typhoon of 1291 is noteworthy because of its place in history. It struck the coast of Japan right when the great Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, was attacking the country. The huge typhoon struck the bay where his forces were moored. They tried to retreat to sea—but didn’t make it. Four thousand ships and 140,000 soldiers were lost. 

Just seven years earlier, another typhoon had struck during a previous Mongol invasion. That one drowned 13,000 men. 

After these events, the Japanese word “kamikaze,” meaning “divine wind,” was coined. And why not? Two storms had just destroyed two...

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