And they are sometimes called Willy Willy's in Australia. They are all, as you have stated, names for the same weather phenomena originating in different parts of the tropical world... However the term cyclone apparently was originated by a British East India, Co., official, Henry Piddington in 1848. From the Greek, kykloun, meaning, moving in a circle, a whirl. While typhoon appears to be a conjunction of two source words: Greek typhon and Cantonese tai-fung. Both roughly mean violent wind. Our more commonlu used hurricane appears to derive, about 1555, from the Spanish huracan, which was derived from a West Indies word, hurakan, again describing violent, circular winds...(Source: Online Etymology). Remember, they spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern. Technical name for all such tropical storms is Tropical Cyclone...