A typhoon named Haiyan, Dim-Sum, or Dolphin. A hurricane called Katrina. A winter storm referred to as Fern. Natural calamities are often given monikers that remain in public memory long after the floods and rains have died down, tectonic plates have stopped shifting, or the ashes have cooled. Incidentally, these deceptively unassuming names are in sharp contrast to the lives and livelihoods that these tragic natural calamities have laid waste to.
Why are they named so? Historically speaking, these names serve different purposes depending on the type of disaster — and, in some cases, there is no official naming system at all, with a mere public poll deciding what the natural disaster will be remembered as. Among the latest in the list of storms is the typhoon Dim-Sum, which was selected after Hong Kong invited the public to suggest culturally representative names and named after the familiar assortment of bite-sized dishes associated with Cantonese cuisine. Other suggestions included names such as Gaeguri (frog) from North Korea and Hebi (snake) from Japan. The process varies from region to region.
In the western North Pacific and South China Sea, names are contributed by members of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) or the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Typhoon Committee. The names can reflect local languages, nature, culture and everyday life. Another name that made headlines this year is Dolphin, which appears on the same regional list. The typhoon made landfall in China’s Zhejiang province on August 9. This name was contributed by Hong Kong as a homage to the local Chinese white dolphins. Different from the Asian naming system of storms is the Atlantic one, which uses people’s names and are allotted in an A-Z sequence. Some examples are Haiyan (cyclone of 2013), Mangkhut (typhoon of 2018), Irma (hurricane of 2017), Maria (typhoon of 2024), Sandy (cyclone of 2024) and Katrina (hurricane of 2025). Notably, even though the Atlantic system reuses certain storm names, a number of them in the past, including Sandy and Katrina, had left such destruction in their wake that they were considered inappropriate to be used again.
When a deadly cyclone can make its name strongly associated with tragedy to reuse, regional committees can then retire it and select a replacement. Notably, until the late 1970s, hurricanes in the US were all named after women. The practice started when military meteorologists started naming Atlantic storms after their wives and partners in 1953, post weather discussions during World War II. The system changed as there was no scientific reason for storms to be considered ‘female’. Starting in 1979, Atlantic hurricane lists included both men’s and women’s names, alternating between the two. According to the WMO, naming storms makes warnings easier to communicate, helps avoid confusion when several storms are active and improves public awareness and preparedness. There is no single worldwide list. Instead, WMO regional committees establish naming systems for different ocean basins.
Other natural calamities like earthquakes and volcanoes are named differently — rather than personal or perselected names, these are largely based on dates and locations. Earthquakes are named after their epicentre location and year in India. The US Geological Survey uses nearby populated places when assigning descriptive locations to earthquakes. Volcanic mountains and eruptions are named after the mountains, which can have historical value given that the mountains were named after people. Examples are the Mount St Helens eruptions of 1980, and the Mouth Hood and Mount Baker volcanoes, among others. Tsunamis are identified through the earthquake that generated them, rather than receiving a separate personal name. Wildfires are identified by a nearby geographical feature, road, community or other location. Ultimately, a disaster’s name is less about giving nature a human identity and more about giving people a useful shorthand.