Weather system naming in Europe follows several multinational schemes under the EUMETNET framework. On the north Atlantic coast, the United Kingdom's Met Office, in collaboration with its Irish counterpart Met Éireann and, since 2019, its Dutch counterpart the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI),^[1] decided to introduce a storm naming system following the St Jude's day storm on 27–28 October 2013 which caused 17 deaths in Europe^[2][3] and the 2013–14 Atlantic winter storms in Europe to give a single, authoritative naming system to prevent confusion with the media and public using different names for the same storms.^[4] The first European windstorm to be named was Abigail on 10 November 2015.^[5] The definitive list is combined from suggestions from the three countries.^[6]

Other groups include the southwestern countries of Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Spain and Portugal, and the northern group of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Several countries in central and eastern Europe use a naming scheme from the Free University of Berlin.

Tropical storms crossing the Atlantic keep the name assigned by the United States National Hurricane Center.

The practice of using names to identify weather systems goes back several centuries, with systems named after places, people or things they hit before the start of the naming scheme.^[7][8] Credit for the first usage of personal names for weather is generally given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named tropical cyclones and anticyclones between 1887–1907.^[9] Wragge used names drawn from the letters of the Greek alphabet, Greek and Roman mythology and female names, to describe weather systems over Australia, New Zealand and the Antarctic.^[8][9] After the new Australian government had failed to create a federal weather bureau and appoint him director, Wragge started naming cyclones after political figures.^[10] This system of naming weather systems subsequently fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of the Second World War.^[9] Despite falling into disuse the naming scheme was occasionally mentioned in the press, with an editorial published in the Launceston Examiner newspaper on 5 October 1935 that called for the return of the naming scheme.^[7][11]

The oldest naming system in Europe was developed by Karla Wege, a student at the Free University of Berlin's meteorological institute, who suggested that names should be assigned to all areas of low and high pressure that influenced the weather of Central Europe.^[19] The university subsequently started to name every area of high or low pressure within its weather forecasts, from a list of 260 male and 260 female names submitted by its students.^[19][20] The female names were assigned to areas of low pressure while male names were assigned to areas of high pressure.^[19][20] The names were subsequently exclusively used by Berlin's media until February 1990, after which the German media started to commonly use the names, however, they were not officially approved by the German Meteorological Service Deutscher Wetterdienst.^[19][21] The DWD subsequently banned the usage of the names by their offices during July 1991, after complaints had poured in about the naming system.^[20] However, the order was leaked to the German press agency, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, who ran it as its lead weather story.^[20] Germany's ZDF television channel subsequently ran a phone in poll on 17 July 1991 and claimed that 72% of the 40,000 responses favoured keeping the names.^[22] This made the DWD pause and think about the naming system and these days the DWD accept the naming system and request that it is maintained.^[20][21] During 1998 a debate started about if it was discrimination to name areas of high pressure with male names and the areas of low pressure with female names.^[19] The issue was subsequently resolved by alternating male and female names each year.^[19] In November 2002 the "Adopt-a-Vortex" scheme was started, which allowed members of the public or companies to buy naming rights for a letter chosen by the buyer, that are then assigned alphabetically to high and low pressure areas in Europe during each year.^[23] During 2021, the Meteorological Services of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary started to use the names assigned to areas of low pressure by FU Berlin.^[24]

Tropical cyclones that form over the northern Atlantic Ocean are named by the United States National Hurricane Center, once they become tropical storms with 1-minute sustained winds of 35 kn (40 mph; 65 km/h). From time to time, tropical cyclones or their remnants impact Europe and retain the name assigned to them by the United States National Hurricane Center.

During 2013, in response to the increasing usage by the European media of common names for any meteorological depression that caused disruptive weather, a task force of the Working Group for the Cooperation between European Forecasters (WGCEF) started to work on a naming scheme.^[25] The main objective of this project was to develop a project that would be operated by all of the European national meteorological services and used by the media as well as other agencies such as civil protection.^[25] For the purposes of the project, Europe was divided into six groups of neighbouring countries with similar weather and climate characteristics.^[26]

Should a system move from one area to another then it will retain the name it was assigned by the original weather service.

• Winter storm naming in the United States
• Tropical cyclone naming
• Atlantic hurricane season
• European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
• List of European windstorms