About Her- And Himicanes

Here in northern Switzerland, we are enjoying a couple of sunny and rain free days. When one can belive the local centennial calendar, these will be only ones in May.

But we can be lucky, other parts of the world have to face far worse, i.e. tropical cyclones. These violent storms originate over tropical or subtropical waters, and are characterized by violent rainstorms and high-velocity cyclonic winds. There are many weird words for it:

• Hurricane in the North Atlantic Ocean, North Pacific Ocean east of the dateline, and the South Pacific Ocean east of 160°E
• Typhoon in the Northwest Pacific Ocean west of the dateline
• Willy-Willy in Australia.

The word hurricane comes from Spanish huracán. The Spanish took it from the Taíno hurákan. This is quite simple compared to typhoon:

The history of typhoon presents a perfect example of the long journey that many words made in coming to English. It traveled from Greece to Arabia to India, and also arose independently in China, before assuming its current form in our language. The Greek word tuphōn, used both as the name of the father of the winds and a common noun meaning “whirlwind, typhoon,” was borrowed into Arabic during the Middle Ages, when Arabic learning both preserved and expanded the classical heritage and passed it on to Europe and other parts of the world. Ṭūfān, the Arabic version of the Greek word, passed into languages spoken in India, where Arabic-speaking Muslim invaders had settled in the 11th century. Thus the descendant of the Arabic word, passing into English (first recorded in 1588) through an Indian language and appearing in English in forms such as touffon and tufan, originally referred specifically to a severe storm in India. The modern form of typhoon was influenced by a borrowing from the Cantonese variety of Chinese, namely the word taaîfung,Taaîfung, meaning literally “great wind,” was coincidentally similar to the Arabic borrowing and is first recorded in English guise as tuffoon in 1699. The various forms coalesced and finally became typhoon, a spelling that first appeared in 1819 in Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

This is not yet the end of hurricane trivia. Did you ever wonder, why it's not "himicane"? On this date in 1978 the US Department of Commerce had the chutzpah to declare that hurricanes would no longer be named exclusively after women. Why has this been done by the US Department of Commerce? What could I declare today?