Cyclones were usually not named. The tradition started with hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, where tropical storms that reach sustained wind speeds of 39 miles per hour were given names. Incidentally, hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones are all the same, just different names for tropical storms in different parts of the world. Hurricane in the Atlantic, Typhoon in the Pacific and Cyclone in the Indian Ocean. Names have been given to Atlantic storms for the past few hundreds of years. In 1953, the US weather service officially adopted the idea and created a new phonetic alphabet (international) of names from A to W, leaving out Q, U, X, Y and Z. The year's first tropical storm was given the name beginning with the letter "A", the second with the letter "B" and so on through the alphabet. The naming of tropical cyclones is a recent phenomenon involving countries in the region under the aegis of World Meteorological Organisation For the Indian Ocean region, deliberations for naming cyclones began in 2000 and a formula was agreed upon in 2004. Eight countries in the region - Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Oman, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand - all contributed a set of names which are assigned sequentially whenever a cyclonic storm develops. The recent storm Titli was given by Pakistan.
