Names for Weather Disasters in Australia

Abstract

Despite the importance of weather disasters, the names that people give them have been little treated in scholarship, both from an Australian perspective and from that of other parts of the world. This article explores patterns in the naming of bushfires (wildfires), cyclones and floods in Australian English, such as Black Saturday bushfires, Cyclone Linda and 2011 Brisbane floods. Using semantically-enhanced discourse studies, the semantic elements of these such names are unpacked and contextualized. In the case of bushfires, three patterns of naming are deployed at different times during the events. These patterns rely on place names, both local and more widely known, and phrases conveying mourning, which mark the day or the season when the disaster occurred. Cyclones are given personal forenames, both those of men and women, and as such are subject to varieties of linguistic creativity used for people’s names, often with a gendered aspect. Names for floods are less original than those used for other event types yet a year, e.g. 2011, can stand in for a particular event, which evokes the local knowledge of the inhabitants of the place where the flood occurred. It is found that some of those names for weather disasters are used for warning at the time of the event, for coping with trauma, and for collective memories in the aftermath. The study ends with some prospects for the future of names for weather disasters in Australia, and these concluding remarks touch on possibilities for naming heatwaves.

Keywords

• australian english
• australian english onomastics
• bushfires
• cyclones
• floods
• natural semantic metalanguage
• semantically-enhanced discourse studies
• semantics
• weather disaster names
• wildfires