Lists of retired tropical cyclone names

The practice of using names to identify tropical cyclones goes back several centuries, with storms named after places, saints or things they hit before the formal start of naming in each basin. Examples of such names are the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane (also known as the "San Felipe II" hurricane) and the 1938 New England hurricane. The system currently in place provides identification of tropical cyclones in a brief form that is easily understood and recognized by the public. The credit for the first usage of personal names for weather systems is given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named tropical cyclones and anticyclones between 1887 and 1907. This system of naming fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of World War II for the Western Pacific. Over the following decades formal naming schemes were introduced for several tropical cyclone basins, including the North and South Atlantic, Eastern, Central, Western and Southern Pacific basins as well as the Australian region and Indian Ocean.

However, there has been controversy over the names used at various times, with names being dropped for religious and political reasons. Female names were exclusively used in the basins at various times between 1945 and 2000, and were the subject of several protests. At present tropical cyclones are officially named by one of eleven meteorological services and retain their names throughout their lifetimes. Due to the potential for longevity and multiple concurrent storms, the names reduce the confusion about what storm is being described in forecasts, watches and warnings. Names are assigned in order from predetermined lists once storms have one, three, or ten-minute sustained wind speeds of more than , depending on which basin it originates in. Standards vary from basin to basin, with some tropical depressions named in the Western Pacific, while a significant amount of gale-force winds are required in the Southern Hemisphere. The names of significant tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean and Australian region are retired from the naming lists and replaced with another name, at meetings of the World Meteorological Organization's various tropical cyclone committees.

Formal start of naming

The practice of using names to identify tropical cyclones goes back several centuries, with systems named after places, people (like Roman Catholic saints), or things they hit before the formal start of naming in each basin. Examples include the 1526 San Francisco hurricane (named after Saint Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is observed by Catholics on October 4), the 1834 Padre Ruiz hurricane (named after a then-recently-deceased Catholic priest whose funeral service was being held in the Dominican Republic upon landfall there), the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane (named after Lake Okeechobee in the state of Florida, United States, where many of its effects were felt; also named the San Felipe II hurricane in the predominantly-Catholic island of Puerto Rico after a certain Saint Philip with a September 13 feast day), and the 1938 New England hurricane. Credit for the first usage of personal names for weather is generally given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named tropical cyclones and anticyclones between 1887–1907. Wragge used names drawn from the letters of the Greek alphabet, Greek and Roman mythology and female names, to describe weather systems over Australia, New Zealand and the Antarctic. After the new Australian government had failed to create a federal weather bureau and appoint him director, Wragge started naming cyclones after political figures. This system of naming weather systems subsequently fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of the Second World War. Despite falling into disuse the naming scheme was occasionally mentioned in the press, with an editorial published in the Launceston Examiner newspaper on October 5, 1935 that called for the return of the naming scheme. Wragge's naming was also mentioned within Sir Napier Shaw’s “Manual of Meteorology” which likened it to a "child naming waves".

After reading about Clement Wragge, George Stewart was inspired to write a novel, ''Storm'', about a storm affecting California which was named Maria. The book was widely read after it was published in 1941 by Random House, especially by United States Army Air Corps and United States Navy (USN) meteorologists during World War II. During 1944, United States Army Air Forces forecasters (USAAF) at the newly established Saipan weather center, started to informally name typhoons after their wives and girlfriends. This practise became popular amongst meteorologists from the United States Airforce and Navy who found that it reduced confusion during map discussions, and in 1945 the United States Armed Services publicly adopted a list of women's names for typhoons of the Pacific. However, they were not able to persuade the United States Weather Bureau (USWB) to start naming Atlantic hurricanes, as the Weather Bureau wanted to be seen as a serious enterprise, and thus felt that it was "not appropriate" to name tropical cyclones while warning the United States public. They also felt that using women's names was frivolous and that using the names in official communications would have made them look silly. During 1947 the Air Force Hurricane Office in Miami started using the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet to name significant tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic Ocean. These names were used over the next few years in private/internal communications between weather centres and aircraft, and were not included in public bulletins.

During August and September 1950, three tropical cyclones (Hurricanes Baker, Dog and Easy) occurred simultaneously and impacted the United States during August and September 1950, which led to confusion within the media and the public. As a result, during the next tropical cyclone (Fox), Grady Norton decided to start using the names in public statements and in the seasonal summary. This practice continued throughout the season, until the system was made official before the start of the next season. During 1952, a new International Phonetic Alphabet was introduced, as the old phonetic alphabet was seen as too Anglocentric