A brief history of naming hurricanes.

If you've ever wondered how tropical systems get their names you are not alone.

the unofficial naming of tropical systems dates back several hundred years When many hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the particular saint's day on which the hurricane occurred. For example, there was Hurricane Santa Ana which struck Puerto Rico with exceptional violence on July 26, 1825, and San Felipe (the first) and San Felipe (the second) which hit Puerto Rico on September 13 in both 1876 and 1928.

An Australian named Clement Wragge, Director of the Queensland state meteorological department at the end of the 19th century, is credited with being the first person to systematically name storms after real people. The practice didn’t last all that long due to an apparent lack of interest. But it was revived in the 1940s by the American Weather Bureau (forerunner of the National Weather Service), when they started using the military phonetic alphabet for labeling storms.

Then in 1953 the practice started of naming tropical cyclones after female names chosen by U.S. forecasters. But during the 1960’s the idea of exclusively giving hurricanes female names was increasingly coming under fire, as women's organizations spoke out about the practice, saying it was sexist. But the idea of giving hurricanes female names still continued into the late 1970s.

In 1979, the system changed, when they started naming Atlantic storms with the current system of six rotating lists containing 21 alternating male and female names. There are separate lists and names for hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific, and elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean. There is also a list that uses the Greek alphabet, which serves as a backup list for rare seasons such as 2005 and this year.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), is now in charge maintaining and updating the naming list. An international committee of the WMO establishes a list of storm names for each of six years, using English, Spanish or French names for Atlantic Storms. The same general naming systems are used for different ocean regions. Similar to Atlantic names, names in other basins reflect the languages spoken in the region. In the Western North Pacific basin and the Northern Indian Ocean basin, countries in the region contribute one name each per season, which are used alphabetically. Then across all the ocean basins, the entire list rotation repeats. For Atlantic hurricanes, there are exactly six lists of names in the Atlantic system, with each list used in rotation every six years.

Hurricanes that have a severe impact on lives or the economy are remembered by generations after the devastation they caused, and some go into weather history. Whenever a hurricane has had a major impact, any country affected by the storm can request that the name of the hurricane be "retired" by agreement of WMO.

Retiring a name actually means that it cannot be officially reused for at least 10 years, to facilitate historic references, legal actions, insurance claim activities, etc. and avoid public confusion with another storm of the same name. If that happens, a like gender name is selected.

I’ve been asked will Zeta be retired from the naming list. To answer that, I don’t think so. The use of the Greek alphabet, has only ben use for two seasons, 2005 and 2020. The way the Greek naming system works it a year is assigned to the name, for example Zeta in 2005, is now officially recognized as Zeta 2005. This years Zeta is labeled Zeta 2020. This system should make it possible to distinguish the Greek names of different seasons. But the WMO will be the one who decides how they handle the Greek naming list from here on out.