for several hundred years hurricanes were named after saints. in 1887, australian meteorologist clement wragge began giving women's names to tropical cyclones. he thought of history and mythology for names. when he used men's names, they were usually of politicians he hated. by world war ii cyclone names were based on the phonetic alphabet (able, baker, charlie). in 1953 the united states stopped using phonetic names and began using female names for these storms. this ended in 1978 when both male and female names were used for pacific storms. in 1979 this practice was added for hurricanes in the gulf of mexico and the atlantic.