How do typhoons get their name

This convention does not split the list into the annual set of names, so the list is never exhausted. This also means that every name in the list will appear at least once. Note 2. Hence this area has more names compared to 21 names skipping 5 characters in the Atlantic basin. The American-style convention has been applied on typhoon names in the Western North Pacific through In particular, during the American occupation of Japan through , female names of typhoons were officially used in Japan, so American female names are also well known for typhoons attacked just after the World War II.

This American-style convention had been used through Typhoon , and after that Japan Meteorological Agency started to use number conventions for domestic typhoon information. In Okinawa prefecture, however, American occupation has continued until , and American-style convention had been in use during that period. Those male and female names have advantage, especially in the United States, to increase familiarity to hurricanes and help people remember the experiences of severe hurricanes.

Those American names, however, were relatively unknown to Japanese and Asian people, and this is the motivation of establishing another list of typhoon names called Asian names , which has been in effect since Japan Meteorological Agency, for example, proposed names after constellations. Asian names are sorted according to the alphabetical name of countries, so typhoon names themselves are not arranged in an alphabetical order.

Asian names go worldwide as they are, and soon became popular in countries where list-based conventions has already gained popularity, but in Japan, where typhoon numbers have been used for tens of years, typhoon Asian names are still far from popular.

But typhoon Asian names are more and more often noticed by people, especially by Internet users, so we can say that its popularity is gradually increasing.

To know the meaning of the Asian name of recent typhoons, please refer to Digital Typhoon: News Weblog. The same naming convention has been used in Indian Ocean since India Meteorological Department is in charge of naming cyclones, names were suggested by Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Thailand and Sri Lanka, and names are used in the order of alphabetical order of country names.

A new Asian name is not assigned, and the hurricane name is kept as the name of the tropical cyclone. This causes a shift of correspondence between Asian names and typhoon numbers. In recent years, Typhoon and Typhoon has changed from a hurricane to a typhoon. Therefore, typhoons had been recorded in the first round of Asian names in spite of Asian names registered in the list. The hurricane name is usually a name in the central Pacific basin W - W , but in a rare case, a name in the eastern Pacific basin east of W.

One problem with typhoon names is the ambiguity of typhoon names. Some typhoon names had multiple appearances in history, so we need to identify which typhoon is the topic of a text using some hints in the text or background knowledge. This means that a successful natural language processing system of typhoon-related text should resolve the ambiguities of typhoon names, and should solve the problem of "named entity recognition" or "named entity extraction" that automatically identify a typhoon name as the typhoon in history.

This problem is apparent in number-based conventions. If we employ the 4-digit convention, it has an obvious problem of year cycle Typhoon may represent the 14th typhoon of year , or maybe Well, this year cycle is not a big problem yet, but the offical record of typhoons had started to be compiled since , so we should expect to have the year problem at least we have passed the halfway of this periodicity anyway.

And, of course, the 2-digit convention like Typhoon No. We often encounter cases where we have to disambiguate whether the typhoon No. To avoid such an ambiguity problem, we adopt a 6-digit convention like Typhoon , which does not have a short cycle problem as stated, at least before the year On the other hand, list-based conventions also have the same kind of problem because a name is chosen from a circular list, which means that the same name will be "recycled" in the future. For example, on the formation of a new typhoon, we assign a new name from the list of Asian names.

This means that after assigning typhoon names, we return to the first name of the list and reuse same names. Studying past cases reveal that we in fact have 15 typhoons with the name FAYE since In the beginning, storms were named arbitrarily. An Atlantic storm that ripped off the mast of a boat named Antje became known as Antje's hurricane.

Then the mid's saw the start of the practice of using feminine names for storms. In the pursuit of a more organized and efficient naming system, meteorologists later decided to identify storms using names from a list arranged alphabetically. Thus, a storm with a name which begins with A, like Anne, would be the first storm to occur in the year. Before the end of the 's, forecasters started using male names for those forming in the Southern Hemisphere. Since , Atlantic tropical storms have been named from lists originated by the National Hurricane Center.

They are now maintained and updated by an international committee of the World Meteorological Organization. The original name lists featured only women's names. In , men's names were introduced and they alternate with the women's names. Six lists are used in rotation. Thus, the list will be used again in The only time that there is a change in the list is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity.

If that occurs, then at an annual meeting by the WMO Tropical Cyclone Committees called primarily to discuss many other issues the offending name is stricken from the list and another name is selected to replace it. There are five tropical cyclone regional bodies, i. For instance, Hurricane Committee determines a pre-designated list of hurricane names for six years separately at its annual session.

Naming procedures in other regions are almost the same as in the Caribbean. In some of the regions, the lists are established by alphabetical order of the names. In other regions, the lists are established following the alphabetical order of the country names - please see "Tropical Cyclone Names Worldwide" below for more details. In general, tropical cyclones are named according to the rules at a regional level. The names selected are those that are familiar to the people in each region.

The list of hurricane names covers only 21 letters of the alphabet as it is difficult to find six suitable names one for each of the 6 rotating lists starting with Q, U, X, Y and Z. In the interests of safety, the name must be instantly recognizable. In addition, English, French and Spanish names are used in balance on the list in order to reflect the geographical coverage of Atlantic and Caribbean storms.

The list is also gender balanced and respectful of societal sensitivities. Until , when a very active hurricane season occurred and the list was exhausted, the Greek alphabet was used Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, etc. This has occurred twice. This was then adopted in for storms in the Atlantic basin. Instead, there is a strict procedure established by the World Meteorological Organization. For Atlantic hurricanes, there is a list of male and female names which are used on a six-year rotation.