The naming of winds

摘要

WHEN the ancient Greeks made their whirlwinds female, bird-winged Harpyiai tearing up the rigging of ships, it may not have been for chauvinistic reasons. After all, shaggy bearded Boreas was the north wind, and pretty-boy Zephyrus, with his horn of flowers, the west wind; gruff Aiolos kept them all tied up in a bag, and all-male thundering Zeus ruled the lot. In later centuries, too, Christian places simply named their storms after the saints, male or female, on whose feast they fell: so that Puerto Rico was hit in the 19th century by both Santa Ana and San Felipe.