According to a statistical study carried out by researchers at the University of Illinois, in the USA, hurricanes that are given female names generate more fatalities than those baptized with male names because the population perceives them as less threatening and therefore take less precautions.
The study takes into account data from more than six decades and found that storms with female names did indeed kill nearly twice as many people . Although the research proposes to change the method for naming hurricanes, scientists at the National Hurricane Center simply suggest that the public be vigilant and assume the threat posed by each storm, regardless of whether Sam or Samantha calls.
Obviously, the names are assigned arbitrarily and their potential danger has nothing to do with their name , but the coincidence is still curious. And above all, says Kiju Jung, one of the scientists who did the study, “if people exposed to a big storm judge their threat based on their name, then the situation is really dangerous.”
The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , analyzed the damage caused by tropical storms in the United States between 1951 and 2012. Hurricane Katrina (2005) and Hurricane Audrey (1957) – both female, have been excluded from the computation. by the way – because they were so much more lethal than an average hurricane.
According to the data, they found that cyclones named after a girl killed more people. Even those responsible for the study suggest that changing a male name like Charley to one like Eloise to a hurricane could triple the casualty rate because people unconsciously judge them as less violent.
The people who were surveyed, who were asked to imagine that Hurricane Alexandra, Christina or Victoria was approaching, thought they would be less damaging than their male counterparts Alexander, Christopher or Victor. Interestingly, hurricanes in the US were initially only baptized with female names, a practice that meteorologists consider appropriate given the unpredictable nature of tropical storms. The alternating “boy-girl” method was adopted in the late 1970s to avoid accusations of sexism.
