A childhood belief about disasters

I was very young in 1989. One of my earliest memories, growing up in the Charlotte, NC, area was when hurricane Hugo devastated that city in September of 1989. Then the very next month, with Charlotte still far from completely recovered from hurricane Hugo, a major earthquake hit the San Francisco / Oakland area (perhaps best remembered as the earthquake that interrupted the first game of the World Series that year!). With our electricity in Charlotte not long restored from hurricane Hugo, we were watching on television reports of the devastation in the San Francisco Bay area. For me at that time, the name "Hugo" became so associated with natural disaster generally that I often found myself calling the earthquake "Hugo". People were surprised and amused when they found out that some of my references to "Hugo" meant the California earthquake rather than the hurricane on our side of the country. For quite some times afterwards I puzzled as to why earthquakes don't have names as hurricanes do!