How do wildfires get their names?

Some wildfires have obvious names – like the active Line Fire or Bridge Fire – but others, not so much, which begs the question: who names wildfires?

The answer is more obvious than you may think.

According to specialists at natural disaster modeling firm RedZone , naming a wildfire comes down to several factors, the most often of which is who gets there first.

“Most often, the name is determined by the initial attack incident commander or fire dispatcher,” RedZone said in a July release .  “The name is generally based on the geographic location of the fire or a nearby geographic feature…seemingly most often, it is the name of the road where the fire was first reported. Typically, the road name from the 911 caller is the most common for wildfire incident names.”

That is the exact case with the currently burning Line Fire , which started near Base Line Road in San Bernardino County on Thursday.  The two other active fires in the L.A. area as of Tuesday – the Airport Fire and the Bridge Fire – were both named after locations where the blazes were first reported.

RedZone analyzed the top wildfire names between 1895 and 2010 and found that five titles have been used more than 20 times to name a wildfire: Cottonwood (28); Bear (24); Canyon (24); River (23) and Lake (21).

However, due to the sheer number of geographical features across the Golden State (lakes, rivers, canyons etc.) sometimes officials get creative and add a number after the fire name to distinguish it from a previous fire that burned in the same year. An example of that is the small Mill Creek 4 Fire burning in Humboldt County on Tuesday .

Other times, if there was already a Lake Fire in any given year, officials have also gotten more specific with the geographic landmark and named the fire after the specific one near which it ignited (an example of this would be “Green Lake Fire” as opposed to “Lake Fire”).

Speaking to the New York Times , California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection battalion chief David Acuna – who was responsible for naming a fire that started near Domengine Ranch in Fresno County in July – opined that most times, simplicity is best.

“You can imagine if we had the incident commander and other people saying ‘Domengine’ … that would be very taxing,” Acuna said, adding that due to this reasoning, he named it the Dom Fire.

In their 2024 standards memorandum , the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) stated that “thought should be given to ensure [the wildfire name] is relevant and appropriate.”

“Sensitivity should be used in selecting an incident name that will not reflect negatively on the unit, fire organization or agency,” the memo read in part.  “What may seem to be a purely innocent name to the local unit may in fact have negative repercussions far beyond the fire itself.”

Among the names that NIFC says to avoid include naming the fire after a person, private property or company.  Fires should also not be named after another fire or a well-publicized event that could cause confusion; officials are also advised to not use the phrase “Dead Man” when naming a fire.

Regardless of who, or what, determines a wildfire’s name, it’s generally accepted that the World Meteorological Organization’s system for naming a hurricane is much more standardized, with A-Z names (except Q, U, X, Y, Z and any retired name) being used.

Up until 2021, if the list of hurricane names was exhausted, forecasters used Greek letters; however, that system was nixed after public confusion due to nine hurricanes being named with Greek letters in 2020. Before 2020, Greek letters had only been used once, in 2005.

Now, there exists a backup list if there are more than 21 storms in one year.

Circling back to wildfires, as of Tuesday morning, there were 18 burning in California , only one of which has a relatively creative name: the Coffee Pot Fire in Tulare County.

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