While Taiwan's typhoon season may soon have passed, people remain aware that further tempestuous visitors may yet approach the island and inflict harm and few have gained the sense of security that the international bonhomie surrounding their new names, drawn from diverse Asian cultures, may suggest.
Cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons are potentially devastating tropical storms, the names of which are now decided by regional meteorological centers, with the exception of those over the Indian Ocean which do not have names, but ordinal numbers instead, according to Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau (CWB,
This is the first year since 1947 that Asian nations and regions have been able to suggest names for typhoons developing over Asia's western North Pacific region and the South China Sea. The final decision on naming has been taken by an agency in Asia, namely the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA, 日本氣象廳). Previously, typhoons were named by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) of the US Department of Defense. The latter is responsible for issuing tropical cyclone warnings for the Pacific and Indian oceans.
"It is the cry of rising nationalism," said Wu De-jung (
Wu said Asian countries were sensitive to US control over naming typhoons developing in Asia, seeing it as a legacy of western colonialism in the region.
Asian countries have successfully secured the transfer of the right to name typhoons from the US with the approval of the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Nations or regions of the western North Pacific and the South China Sea, including China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Korea, Micronesia, the US and those of South East Asia, have proposed 140 names to be applied in the weather forecast beginning this year.
The name of the most recent typhoon to approach Taiwan was Saomai, Vietnamese for "Venus;" the typhoon which pounded Taiwan in August and claimed 14 lives on the island, was typhoon Bilis, Filipino for "speed."
Some nations have chosen names of characters in local legends or features of their regions. Typhoons Ewiniar and Prapiroon, the ninth and twelfth typhoons respectively in the region this year, were named after the gods of storm and of rain in Micronesia and Thailand respectively.
China has also selected names of figures from Chinese mythology for its name choices. Yutu (玉兔), for example, is a rabbit in the palace of the moon mixing the elixir of life in a Chinese folktale; Longwang (龍王) is Chinese for Dragon King, who controls the rain and is the name of the second typhoon of the year.
As neither a member of nor even an observer at the UN, and therefore unable to join the WMO, Taiwan cannot take part in the fun of choosing names.
"But why should we bother to fight for the right to name typhoons? Typhoons bring nothing but negative images," Wu said without a second thought when asked whether the CWB had pushed for such a right. "Moreover, I think the politicization of perfectly neutral scientific matters is totally unnecessary," he added. "It has even made the translation of these names, from all sorts of languages into Chinese, a real headache," he said.
Wu also said that it is sometimes confusing for meteorologists to discuss typhoons without a name list at hand. Because different regions and nations started to name typhoons, the names have been listed in no obvious order under countries or regions, instead of simply alphabetically by the name of the typhoon as before. "Previously we could easily find out when the typhoon in question occurred by looking up the name on the alphabetic list of names, instead of first trawling through this jumbled list of countries," he said.
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