Social media users have long claimed 19th-century Australian meteorologist Clement L. Wragge is the reason modern hurricanes receive human names. Wragge, who monitored weather in the late-19th- and early-20th-centuries, allegedly named storm systems after various types of people he disliked, including politicians.

One Reddit post, which had received more than 63,000 upvotes as of this writing, discussed the rumor on Sept. 17, 2024, during that year’s hurricane season:

The reason hurricanes and cyclones have human names is that the original meteorologist to name them, Clement Wragge, began naming them after politicians he didn’t like. This let him say they were ‘causing great distress’ or ‘wandering aimlessly’.byu/Bad-Umpire10 inDamnthatsinteresting

Though secondary sources have credited Wragge with initiating the naming of tropical cyclones and hurricanes monitored by his observatories — primarily in Australia — the 20th-century naming of storms in the U.S. took a more systematic approach and has been overseen by weather …