Tropical cyclones are non-frontal, low-pressure systems that develop, within an environment of warm sea surface temperatures and little vertical wind shear aloft.^[1] Within the Australian region, names are assigned from three pre-determined lists, to such systems, once they reach or exceed ten–minute sustained wind speeds of 65 km/h (40 mph), near the center, by either the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Papua New Guinea's National Weather Service or Indonesia's Badan Meteorologi Klimatologi dan Geofisika.^[1] Within the Australian region, tropical cyclones have been officially named since the 1963–64 Australian region cyclone season, though several meteorological papers show that a few tropical cyclones were named before 1964–65.^[2][3][4] The names of significant tropical cyclones that cause a high amount of damage and/or loss of life are retired from the lists of tropical cyclone names by the World Meteorological Organization's RA V Tropical Cyclone Committee at their bi-annual meeting. Storms named by Port Moresby are automatically retired regardless of their impact due to their infrequent occurrence.^[1]

Within the Australian region, there have been a total of 134 tropical cyclone names retired. Among the retired storms are cyclones Gwenda and Inigo, two of the most intense systems ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere; both attained a barometric pressure of 900 hPa (26.58 inHg). The deadliest cyclone to have its named retired was Cyclone Seroja in 2021, which killed 272 people in Indonesia, East Timor and Australia, while the most damaging system to have its name retired was Severe Tropical Cyclone Tracy in 1974 which devastated the city of Darwin, leaving A$837 million (A$5.65 billion 2019 AUD; US$2.64 billion 2019 USD) in losses.

Within the region the credit for the first usage of personal names for weather systems, is generally given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named systems between 1887 and 1907.^[5] Wragge used names drawn from the letters of the Greek alphabet, Greek and Roman mythology and female names, to describe weather systems including tropical cyclones over Australia, New Zealand and the Antarctic.^[5] After the new Australian government had failed to create a federal weather bureau and appoint him director, Wragge started naming cyclones after political figures.^[6] This system of naming weather systems subsequently fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, before the Australian Bureau of Meteorology started to use female names for tropical cyclones in the region during the 1963–64 cyclone season.^[5]

During the International Women's Year of 1975 the Australian Science Minister ordered that tropical cyclones, within the Australian region, should carry both men's and women's names.^[5] This was because the minister thought "that both sexes should bear the odium of the devastation caused by cyclones."^[5] As a result, male names were added to the lists of names for both basins, ahead of the 1975–76 season.^[5][7]

The practice of retiring significant names was started during 1955 by the United States Weather Bureau in the Northern Atlantic basin, after hurricanes Carol, Edna, and Hazel struck the Northeastern United States and caused a significant amount of damage in the previous year.^[8] Initially the names were only designed to be retired for ten years after which they might be reintroduced, however, it was decided at the 1969 Interdepartmental hurricane conference, that any significant hurricane in the future would have its name permanently retired.^[8][9] Several names have been removed from the Pacific naming lists for various other reasons than causing a significant amount of death/destruction, which include being pronounced in a very similar way to other names and political reasons.^[10][11]