I’ve always wondered: how do cyclones get their names?

• News & Highlights

Who calls cyclones their names? – Guy Mullin, Mozambique.

In the Australian region, the Bureau of Meteorology gives tropical cyclones their name. You can write to the Bureau of Meteorology to suggest a cyclone name, but it is likely to be more than a 50-year wait.

Tropical cyclones are named so we can easily highlight them to the community, and to reduce confusion if more than one cyclone happens at the same time. The practice of naming tropical cyclones (or storms) began years ago to help in the quick identification of storms in warning messages. Humans find names far easier to remember than numbers and technical terms.

Clement Wragge began naming cyclones in 1887

Now, people ask us all the time how we come up with the names for tropical cyclones. It started in 1887 when Queensland’s chief weather man Clement Wragge began naming tropical cyclones after the Greek alphabet, fabulous beasts, and politicians who annoyed him.

After Wragge retired in 1908, the naming of cyclones and storms occurred much less frequently, with only a handful of countries informally naming cyclones. It was almost 60 years later that the Bureau formalised the practice, with Western Australia’s Tropical Cyclone Bessie being the first Australian cyclone to be officially named on January 6, 1964.