hurakán

When Spanish colonizers arrived in the Caribbean, the Taíno people told them of Hurakán — a powerful deity who controlled storms and destruction. The Taíno knew these storms intimately; they had lived with them for thousands of years.

The Spanish borrowed the god's name for the storms themselves. By the 16th century, huracán appeared in Spanish texts describing the Caribbean's terrifying weather. The god became the phenomenon, the divine became the meteorological.

English borrowed 'hurricane' from Spanish. At first, it was used only for Caribbean storms. But as meteorology developed, the word spread to describe all tropical cyclones in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific. The Taíno god's territory expanded.

Today, NOAA tracks hurricanes, assigns them names, predicts their paths. But the word itself remains a tribute to the people who first named these storms — and to a god whose power still terrifies coastlines from Florida to Nova Scotia.