He hoped the publicity would encourage expectant mothers to opt for these names over “the harsh stereotyped appellations of ‘Susan,’ ‘Jane,’ and such like.” The more notable outcome, as E. National Library of Australia, Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain Cyclones Eline, Mahina, and Leonta, to cite a few, arrived in the region between 18.Ī map from 'The Pearling Disaster, 1899: A Memorial' shows the convergence of cyclone Mahina and moonsoon Nachon. For a while, Wragge worked his way through the letters of various alphabets.īut the whiskery weatherman’s most lasting appellative legacy was his penchant for picking what he referred to as “the soft dulcet names of the dusky beauties of the South Sea Islands.” In other words, Wragge was naming tropical storms after Polynesian women. There was Lewis, a monsoon named for “a supporter from Tasmania,” and Sir Joseph Ward, an “Antarctic disturbance” who shared its moniker with a New Zealand politician (and future prime minister). By the late 1880s, Wragge had settled in Brisbane, Australia, and started publishing a highly editorialized forecast bulletin in which he named Oceania’s weather events after basically whatever and whomever he felt like. The personification trend gained momentum when British meteorologist Clement Wragge-or “Inclement” Wragge, as he was known-came along in the 19th century. People have been naming storms for ages 16th-century Spanish settlers, for example, sometimes named North American gales after saints whose feast days coincided with the natural disasters. Sir Harold Nicholas, State University of Queensland // Public Domain Female Force WindsĬlement Wragge in 1899. But Bolton’s mettlesome crusade shone a spotlight on a sexist custom that had started long before the mid-20th century-and, with her help, would end before the decade did. Perhaps predictably, this suggestion was rejected. Jacob Javits destroys New York,” she said in an interview a few months later. Barry Goldwater annihilates Louisiana, or U.S. “Can’t you just see the headlines like, U.S. senators? After all, she explained, they seemed to appreciate serving as namesakes for just about everything else. She even offered an alternative: Why not draw inspiration from the roster of U.S. “As long as people can name her-icanes after us it’s just another way of putting women down.” “I’m sick and tired of hearing that ‘Cheryl was no lady as she devastated such and such a town,’ or ‘Betsy annihilated this or that,’” the Florida feminist said. The problem was that there were no him-icanes: Federal officials had been christening storms with traditionally female names since the early 1950s. In January 1972, Roxcy Bolton showed up to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conference to talk about “her-icanes” and “him-icanes.”
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