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In light of the recent hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season, a lot of people are being exposed to the Greek alphabet. Why are we naming storms after the Greek alphabet? Because we ran out of names.

You see, the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations agency that is responsible for maintaining meteorological standards, has an alphabetical list of 21 names that goes back and forth, alternating between the masculine and feminine. They use six different lists on a rotating basis. That means the list that we've been using this year will be reused in 2026.

This isn't the first time we've had to move on to naming storms using the Greek alphabet because we ran out of names, but it's certainly not the norm. In fact, with the formation of Delta and it's subsequent intensification to hurricane status, Delta is now officially the 9th hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic season.

So how does one learn the Greek alphabet? As an alum of the Zeta Kappa Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, I learned the Greek alphabet during my 'pledge' or 'new member' phase and it's stuck with me all these years later.

Here's how to learn the entire Greek alphabet, in order, using a simple, easy to learn song.

Α - ALPHA
B - BETA
Γ - GAMMA
Δ - DELTA
E - EPSILON
Z - ZETA
H - ETA
Θ - THETA
I - IOTA
K - KAPPA
Λ - LAMBDA
M - MU
N - NU
Ξ - XI
O - OMICRON
Π - PI
P - RHO
Σ - SIGMA
T - TAU
Y - UPSILON
Φ - PHI
X - CHI
Ψ - PSI
Ω - OMEGA

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