How do Atlantic hurricanes get their names?
The formal practice of naming Atlantic hurricanes began in the 1950s
Hurricanes and tropical storms are an indelible part of human history—and the names we call these storms often come to define their fury.
But how do these storms get those names in the first place?
DON’T MISS: What’s the difference between hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones?
The history of naming tropical cyclones
Dozens of tropical cyclones form around the world every year. Forecasters assign these storms names in order to keep track of them and effectively communicate their hazards to the public.
Most hurricanes before the mid-20th century earned nicknames based on where they made landfall, such as the Long Island Express of 1938. The process of formally naming tropical systems began in the Atlantic basin during the 1950 hurricane season.
American forecasters used the old phonetic alphabet to name that year’s storms behind the scenes. The first named storm, Hurricane Able, went on to strike Nova Scotia as a hurricane.
Sensing the usefulness of the practice, meteorologists came up with dedicated lists of names beginning in 1953 to discuss these storms in public.
The inaugural names were all feminine, beginning with Hurricane Alice and continuing down the list with Barbara, Carol, Dolly, and so on.
Today’s naming practice began in 1979
Officials ditched feminine-only names in the late 1970s and instituted the naming scheme we have today.
The new plan saw 126 names divided evenly among six lists, with one list used each season.
Names alternate between masculine and feminine, and the pool was chosen to reflect the diversity of the Atlantic basin by drawing from the English, Spanish, and French languages. The lists skip Q, U, X, Y, and Z for lack of common names beginning with those letters.
Each list of names is recycled every six years, so most of the inaugural names used in 1979 were reused in 1985.
Some names warrant retirement
Meteorologists realized early on that reusing the name of a particularly deadly or destructive storm is both insensitive to survivors and a situation primed for potential confusion.
Countries can petition the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization to ‘retire’ a name from future use.
Hurricane Carol, which struck the Canadian Maritimes in September 1953, was the first storm to see its name retired.
All told, the Atlantic basin has seen 99 names retired as of the 2024 hurricane season. The most recent retirements were Beryl, Helene, and Milton. Only 57 per cent of the original 126 names chosen in 1979 are still in use today.
Storms named with the letter “I” have seen the most retirements at 13—largely due to the ninth named storm occurring during the peak of hurricane season when storms can achieve significant strength.
A robust season can exhaust the list of names
The average Atlantic hurricane season produces 14 named storms, but an exceptionally active season can see a significantly higher number of tropical storms and hurricanes.
What happens when a hurricane season runs out of names? That’s only happened twice—first in 2005, then again in 2020. For those two seasons, officials used the Greek alphabet as a backup to name any excess storms.
But the fallback naming plan ran into a major problem during the historic 2020 season, which saw a whopping 30 named storms. Two of those storms named after Greek letters, Eta and Iota, were bad enough that they warranted retirement.
Since it’s impractical to ‘retire’ an entire letter from the alphabet, officials developed a supplementary list of names in case we see more than 21 storms in a single season.
Header image created using graphics and imagery from NOAA and Canva.