Andrew, Klaus, Hugo, Betsy, Bob and Hilda... The list is as long as an oversized primary school class register. But there is nothing cute about these little darlings. Believe it or not, they are all retired hurricane names.

Along with Gracie, Roxanne, Ike, Katrina, Marilyn, Joan and Carmen, the likes of Hugo, Betsy and Bob have all in their day caused so much damage that the World's Meteorological Organisations have, forever, retired their names from official lists of hurricane and tropical storm names.

We're talking about the 73 named monsters of destruction that have been retired from the lists of Atlantic storms, including Andrew, Florida's most expensive hurricane, which caused $15.5 billion in insured property losses in 1992. The 2005 saw that largest exodus from the list when five names were stricken, including Katrina, which flooded New Orleans, killed more than 1,000 people and cost insurers $41 billion, the most of any natural disaster.

Hurricane Isabel, which had maximum winds of 166 miles an hour, struck North Carolina in September 2003. It moved north through Virginia and Maryland before dissipating in Canada. Isabel was directly responsible for 16 deaths and caused $3.4 billion in damage, according to the hurricane centre's storm archives.

But how does something with such monstrous potential acquire such an innocuous name?

Tropical cyclones, (or tropical storms) (wind speeds between 39 mph and 74 mph) or hurricanes (wind speeds of 75 mph and above) form within seven regions around the world called 'basins'.

As there can be 100 or so storms a year meteorologists need a means of identifying individual storms to avoid confusion, especially as one or more storms may be followed and charted by many meteorologists simultaneously.

Early naming strategies were informal and individualistic in their approach. For several hundred years in the Caribbean, hurricanes were named after the saints day on which they occurred. For example "Hurricane San Felipe" struck Puerto Rico on 13 September 1876. Later, latitude and longitude were used, but this was found to be complicated and more prone to error.

According to one report the first use of a proper name for a tropical storm was by an Australian forecaster in the early part of last century, who reputedly named his storms after politicians that he didn't like.

During World War II however, it was loved ones who provided the inspiration for the name game. US Army Air Corp and Navy meteorologists affectionately christened storms with female names after their wives and loved ones — imagine, "Hurricane Hotlips hits Florida" or "Peaches has petered out in the Pacific"!

By 1950 the first formal name strategy was in place for North Atlantic cyclones. The storms took their names from the phonetic alphabet of the time (Able-Baker-Charlie-etc) and this continued until 1952. But officials soon realised the naming convention would cause problems in the history books if more than one powerful Hurricane Able made landfall.

So, in 1953 the organisation adopted a rotating series of women's names, planning to retire names of significant storms. Feminists urged the WMO to add men's names, which was done in 1979.

The male-female-male-female naming convention evolved to include French and Spanish names in the Atlantic system, reflecting the languages of the nations affected by Caribbean hurricanes.

There are six lists that are used in rotation; the list for each year is arranged in alphabetical order, with alternating male and female names. If more than 21 storms should occur in any season, then there is an 'unlikely' reserve list that uses the Greek alphabet. This gives the World Meteorological Organization 24 more names to work with, so additional seasonal storms can be named as Alpha, Beta, Gamma etc.

The naming of cyclones today continues in much the same vein. Each Basin or region has an agreed list of names — the applications of which vary slightly. For instance, cyclones in the Atlantic basin and in the Eastern Pacific give the first storm of each year an 'A' name. Whereas the year's first cyclone in the Central Pacific takes the next name on the list regardless of which letter it starts with.

Of course, if a storm should wander from one basin region into another it would be rewarded with a new name from that region.