Storm SUNSHINE! Welsh ridicule the Met Office for choosing Heulwen as name for storm which translates literally as ‘sun blessed’
- Heulwen is a common name in Wales and translates to ‘sun blessed’ or ‘sunshine’
- Inclusion in the list of storm names for the upcoming season has amused many
- The UK has reached the eighth name in 2018 with Hector and 2019 with Hannah
The Met Office has announced its alphabetical list of storm names for the 2020-21 season but there’s one name that has attracted ridicule from Welsh speakers.
Storm Heulwen has been included as the eighth storm name for the upcoming year but Welsh speakers have pointed out the name literally translates to ‘sunshine’.
The Met Office work alongside their partners in the Met Éireann in Ireland and KNMI of the Netherlands to name the storms, and say they choose names that reflect the diversity of Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands.
And although Heulwen is a common name for girls in Wales, it also translates to ‘sun blessed’ or ‘sunshine’.
The choice has sparked widespread amusement on social media.
The Met Office has been ridiculed across social media for including Storm Heulwen – which translates as sunshine in Welsh – in its list of 2020/21 storm names for the upcoming season
BBC weatherman Owain Wyn Evans tweeted: ‘New storm names announced today dahlings. FYI- Heulwen is ‘sunshine’ in Welsh.
‘Who’s looking forward to Storm Sunshine?!’
Neil Jones added: ‘Oh dear! I’ve just seen the storm list for the next year.
‘The 8th storm has been given a Welsh name Heulwen. This is a reasonably common female given name, but like many such Welsh names it has an actual meaning.
‘Rather inappropriately for a storm it actually means SUNSHINE!’
Peter Gillibrand said: ‘The Met Office has just announced there will be a Storm Heulwen in 2020/2021.
‘I’m not sure if they got the memo that it translates from Welsh as sunshine…’
The UK has reached the eighth storm name twice in recent years – Storm Hector in 2018 and Storm Hannah in 2019 but in the most recent season it only reached Storm Francis
Bleddyn Bowen said: ‘Heulwen’ means sunshine, so I’m looking forward to that one.
‘And attempts by British newsreaders to say it.’
‘Thanks for including a Welsh name,’ Rhys Gerallt Owen. ‘Heulwen is probably one of the least appropriate names for a storm though.’
‘Would be great to have more than one Welsh name next year,’ Meinir Morris said. ‘The irony of the meaning of the name though…’
The UK has reached the eighth storm name twice in recent years – Storm Hector in 2018 and Storm Hannah in 2019.
Oliver Claydon, a Met Office spokesman, told The Daily Telegraph that people involved in the storm-naming protocol live in Wales, and everyone had been aware of the name’s meaning.
He added that the exercise of naming storms was more about identification and raising awareness of inclement weather, rather than the meanings behind a particular name, and he highlighted that Tobias can translate as ‘good’.
The criteria used for naming storms is based on the Met Office’s National Severe Weather Warnings service.
This is based on a combination of both the impact the weather may have, and the likelihood of those impacts occurring.
A storm will be named when it has the potential to cause an amber or red warning.
When the criteria for naming a storm are met, either the Met Office, Met Éireann or KNMI can name a storm.
The name is then circulated to the public, media outlets, the government and emergency services to make it easier to communicate information about a particular storm.
Earlier this year the Met Office and Met Éireann asked people to send in their ideas for future storm names.
A spokesman for the Met Office added: ‘We received thousands of suggestions and this year’s list has been compiled from these public suggestions, choosing some of the more popular names and names that reflect the diversity of Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands.’
To avoid any confusion over naming, if a storm is the remnants of a tropical storm or hurricane that has moved across the Atlantic, the Met office stick with its previous name.