List of retired South Pacific cyclone names

History

During the latter stages of World War II, forecasters with the United States Armed Forces started naming tropical cyclones over the Pacific Ocean after their wives and sweethearts.^[5][9] In 1945, after the practice had become popular among forecasters who found that it reduced confusion during map discussions, the Armed Forces formalized the scheme and began publicly assigning female names to tropical cyclones in the Northern Hemisphere and male names to those in the Southern Hemisphere.^[10][11] Over the next few years, the practice gradually fell into disuse in the Southern Hemisphere, before it was revived by the Meteorological Service of New Caledonia during the 1958-59 season.^[5][7] In November 1962, New Caledonia proposed to the Third Session of the World Meteorological Organization's Regional Association V that all tropical cyclones that occurred within the region should be identified with female names.^[12] In response, other members of the Association suggested using male names to avoid any confusion with the names used in the Northern Hemisphere, but noted that any naming scheme would require close coordination in order to avoid causing confusion.^[12] Ultimately, the Association decided that there was no need for a regional naming scheme to be introduced to the south of the Equator; however, it had no objections to members using such schemes on a national basis provided that the same names were not allocated in neighboring regions to different cyclones.^[12]

In October 1963, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology announced that its three tropical cyclone warning centres in Perth, Darwin and Brisbane, would start using female names to name tropical cyclones during the upcoming season. At the time, the New Zealand Meteorological Service

In 1979, the NZMS considered adding traditional Pacific names to the naming lists, rather than relying solely on European names, which prompted considerable discussion due to the anticipated difficulties of navigating the region's many languages and cultures.^[5] One proposal was that cyclones should be given names from the country nearest to where they formed; however, this proposal was abandoned when it was realised that a cyclone might be less destructive in its formative stage than later in its development.^[5] Eventually, it was decided to pool names from across the South Pacific during a training course, where each course member provided a list of names that were short, easily pronounced, culturally acceptable throughout the region and free of idiosyncrasies.^[5] These names were then collated, edited for suitability and cross-checked with the group for acceptability to create four alphabetical lists of names, which have been used by the Fiji Meteorological Service since the 1980–81 season.^[5]

At the 22nd session of the RA V Tropical Cyclone Committee in 2024, the names Lola and Mal were retired and replaced with Lia and Manoah, while it was noted that the name Eseta had been previously retired after its use in 2003.^[13] The name Rae was retired the following year, after it caused strong winds, heavy rain and flooding in Fiji.^[14]