A: Naming hurricanes seems to date back to Spanish monks in Cuba. They would name the hurricanes for the saint days on which they fell. Hurricane Santa Ana struck Puerto Rico on July 26, 1825, the day of Santa Ana. When hurricanes hit land on the same saint day years apart, they were tagged first and second, as was the case with hurricane San Felipe the first, which made landfall at Puerto Rico on Sept. 13, 1876, and hurricane San Felipe the second, which struck land on Sept. 13, 1928.

Years later, hurricanes, which were most often reported by ships at sea, were named for their coordinates of latitude and longitude. This system failed to work because hurricanes are erratic forces of nature that often hit several locations. The same storm might end up with a number of “named” coordinates, thus creating confusion and panic.

Giving nature’s force a human identity is first attributed to George R. Stewart, whose novel “Storm” was published in 1941. In his book, he named his hurricane for a woman. This caught the fancy of the Air Force and Navy meteorologists who plotted Pacific storms during World War II. They began giving those storms women’s names.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the United States, between 1860 and 1865 hurricanes were named for the phonetic alphabet (Abel, Baker, etc.). But in 1953, the nation’s weather services began using female names for storms.

Then in 1979, U.S. National Weather Service, which is the federal agency that tracks hurricanes and issues warnings and watches, decided to use both men’s and women’s names. One name is selected for each letter of the alphabet except for Q, U, X, Y and Z (because of the scarcity of names beginning with those letters). For Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, the names given can be French, Spanish or English, since these are the major languages bordering the Atlantic.

The World Meteorological Organization is the group that decides which names are used each year. The list they use is prepared every six years. The same lists are reused and new names are added only if named hurricanes cause widespread damage. Those storms’ names are then retired and new names are added to the list.

As soon as a storm with rotary circulation reaches wind speeds of 39 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Fla., christens the storm with a name.

Q How do I get rid of an old, worn U.S. flag?

A: When a flag is so worn it is no longer fit to serve as a symbol of our country, it should be destroyed by burning in a dignified manner. Some Scout Troops and American Legion Posts sponsor old flag collections and dignified burning ceremonies (usually around Flag Day in June), and many U.S. post offices will also collect old flags for destruction.

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