Why do Americans name hurricanes?

@Andromedanian I'm not able to speak about outside the U.S. so I keep it to my country

@Riverman2 the hurricane was gods punishment for the lord of the rings amazon series

@pianoplayingsteve I didn't see it. Apparently it wasn't much good?

@Riverman2 i heard that too, too focused on dieversity. Shame, lord of the rings is my favourite thing

@reflectingmonkey makes sense. Usually though, the names like Mississipi river and Colorado river kinda make sense. But the idea of associating Irene with a year is odd to me rather than just refering the year directly. If that makes sense

@Iwantyourhotwife maybe its has to do with how the brain categorizes things, humans tend to personify things, forces of nature become spirits or gods, that sort of thing but in modern times we abandoned the animistic aspect and kept only the part about giving it a name. maybe animism is actually a kind of human instinct related more to how the brain works than specific belief systems.

@reflectingmonkey This is actually really insightful. Thank you

@pianoplayingsteve I'm American in case you wanted confirmation 😂

@Iwantyourhotwife
In Europe storms are named as a joint enterprise between the UK’s Met Office, Ireland’s Met Éireann and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). The list is set in advance, runs in alphabetical order and usually alternates between names associated with male and female gender. In 2020, Ellen, Francis, Gerda and Hugh are to follow Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis in turn.
According to the Met Office, the decision for a storm to be named is “based on a combination of both the impact the weather may have, and the likelihood of those impacts occurring. A storm will be named when it has the potential to cause an amber or red weather warning.”..

@Mooed78 that's kinda dope tbh
I need to read into it

@DeluxedEdition that's interesting. Part of why I am asking is that I was thinking about what solution would be brought if the number of hurricanes exceed the number of American names 👀

A numbering system or one associated with year makes more sense to me than trying to remember when "Irene" happened

@shinyena that’s 100% why. We name things to distinguish them from other things

@TexChik ah, I see. And you seem to get why I was asking

This kind of naming scheme
Just makes more sense to me tbh. But if it's a planned out tradition for now, I guess it is what it is. As the years progress, my thinking was what would be used after common names run out? And then it evolved into why we picked naming them as opposed to IDing them

@ChipmunkErnie we use a numeric system for highways and the vast majority of other ID systems across the country. My confusion was why we resorted to naming as opposed to IDs

@Iwantyourhotwife Because names are easier to remember? Like "Hurricane Adam" as opposed to "Hurricane 2022-32-SA-13a"?

@exexec we do seem to refer to things like ships, buildings and cars as a 'she'

@exexec maybe it is also due to the fact that hurricanes cause chaos and that the feminine has traditionally been associated with chaos

@pianoplayingsteve That's the kind of discussion starter that was fun back then.

@Iwantyourhotwife we dont name highways because we instead have codes for them which works better in the context of being a connection network. Imagine hurricane katrina but instead highway katrina, that would be no help as to giving directions saying use this road and then that. Code allows you to know which exits or entrances to use, how many roads diverge off before the one you want etc

@pianoplayingsteve so you get me. Codifying things helps us associate that code with something we keep track of. I'm thinking a system to show the intensity and year would have made sense for hurricanes and tropical storms as opposed to encapsulating it in a name. But I guess the system is how it is

@Iwantyourhotwife but thats also because there are an insane number of roads, we would run out of names. We still do record the details of hurricanes but a name makes it easier to refer to. Imagine it in another context....do you remember that 1,500,000? What am i talking about? Obviously the armenian genocide, we name genocides after the death count, now, it shows its intensity