Typhoon or hurricane? How typhoons near Taiwan get their names

One kind of storm, three words

Meteorologists call storms of this kind tropical cyclones: rotating storms that form over tropical oceans. According to the Hong Kong Observatory, which explains the terminology in its educational pages, the strongest of them are called typhoons in the western North Pacific, hurricanes in the North Atlantic and in the central and eastern North Pacific, and cyclonic storms in the North Indian Ocean.

So a hurricane that drifted across the date line into the western Pacific would not change its nature, only the word used for it. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) lists the names side by side: hurricane, typhoon, tropical cyclone or very severe cyclonic storm, “depending on the basin”.

The origin of the word “typhoon” itself is uncertain. The Hong Kong Observatory lists several proposed sources, from Arabic and Greek to the Chinese dialect expression “tai fung”, meaning “big wind”.

When a storm becomes a typhoon

Tropical cyclones are classified by the maximum sustained wind speed near their centre. The WMO describes the steps as follows. Below 63 kilometres per hour the system is a tropical depression. Above 63 kilometres per hour it becomes a tropical storm, and it is then also given a name. When the maximum sustained wind exceeds 116 kilometres per hour, or 63 knots, it is a hurricane, typhoon or equivalent, depending on the basin.

Different agencies quote the threshold slightly differently: the Hong Kong Observatory, for example, gives 118 kilometres per hour or more for a typhoon or hurricane. They also average the wind over different periods; Hong Kong uses 10-minute mean winds, and the WMO publishes guidelines for converting between averaging periods. This is one reason why two agencies can report different intensities for the same storm.

Above the basic threshold, some services add their own categories. Since 2009 the Hong Kong Observatory has divided typhoons into typhoon, severe typhoon and super typhoon. In the Atlantic, the Saffir–Simpson scale ranks hurricanes from Category 1, with winds of 119 to 153 kilometres per hour, to Category 5, with winds of at least 252 kilometres per hour.

Who picks the names

Since 1 January 2000, tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific and the South China Sea have been named from a common list. Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration (CWA) describes it as 140 names divided into five groups of 28, with each of the 14 members of the Typhoon Committee contributing 10 names. The names are assigned by the WMO Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre in Tokyo.

According to the WMO, a name is given only to storms of tropical storm strength or above, together with a four-digit identification number, and the names are used sequentially: the list does not start again each year but continues where the previous season stopped.

Many of the names are not people’s names at all. The CWA publishes their meanings: Damrey means elephant, Kalmaegi means seagull, and Koki, one of the newest additions, is a tree, Hopea odorata.

How names leave the list

The list is not fixed. Names can be retired by the ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee and replaced with new ones. At its 58th session, held on Jeju Island in the Republic of Korea from 10 to 13 March 2026, the Committee approved the retirement of eight names – Wipha, Co-may, Matmo, Mitag, Ragasa, Bualoi, Kalmaegi and Fung-wong – and asked the members that had contributed them to propose replacements for its next session (status as of 3 November 2026).

The same session endorsed nine new names. According to the Hong Kong government, Dim-sum, Koki, Gaeguri, Hebi, Tomo, Tirou, Narae, Burapha and Hoaban replace Kong-rey, Toraji, Man-yi, Usagi, Yagi, Ewiniar, Krathon and Trami, as well as Jebi, which was retired because of an inappropriate meaning in other languages (status as of 3 November 2026).

Why Taiwan leads with a number

Taiwan’s forecasters handle the list in their own way. The CWA keeps typhoon numbers as the main identifier and uses the international names as auxiliary ones: the first typhoon of 2004, for example, is numbered 0401, the year followed by the storm’s place in the season’s sequence. The CWA reports that in a public survey, more than 74% of respondents preferred numbers as the main identification.

A number carries information that a name does not: it says at a glance in which year the storm formed and where it falls in the season. A name is easier to remember.

Whatever the storm is called, what matters for people in Taiwan is the warning. Roughly 21 to 25 typhoons typically form in the western North Pacific between June and December, and around 3 to 5 of them affect the vicinity of Taiwan. How the CWA decides when to issue sea and land warnings, and how to read its probability maps, is explained on Reading a typhoon warning; what one famous typhoon did to the damper of Taipei 101 is on A pendulum in a skyscraper. For the other force that shapes life in Taipei, see Why does Taiwan have so many earthquakes?