The weather bureau tells us that we are now officially in an ‘El Niño event’ and, as a result we can expect warmer and drier weather. For us wordies the question is: where did this ‘El Niño’ label come from? The answer (it turns out) is from Peruvian fishermen, centuries ago. The story starts with a warm ocean current the flows by the northern coast of Peru regularly, like clockwork, from about Christmas to about March every year. The local fishermen called this warm ocean current ‘El Niño de Navidad’ – Spanish for ‘The Christmas Child’ (or, perhaps, more literally ‘The Christmas Boy’ since ‘El Nino’ is the masculine form in Spanish – the equivalent feminine form is ‘La Niña’). There is evidence they coined this label as long ago as the 1600s. Then around 1896 meteorologists were looking for a name for a warm ocean current phenomenon. When it turned up (irregularly) in its extreme form it travelled west across the Pacific from Peru causing warmer and drier weather on every continent it touched. As they looked around for a name, they chose the Spanish expression coined by those Peruvian fishermen so long ago, and called it the ‘El Niño Southern Oscillation’. And this, remember, was coined back in 1896 – long before ‘climate change’. So why will we have a warmer, drier summer folks? Because of ‘the Christmas child’ – not climate change!