Senior citizens Herman Stewart and his common-law wife Evelyn Sterling ponder their fate yesterday as they await the passage of Tropical Storm Gustav. They were reluctant to evacuate their humble seaside home in Duhaney Pen, St Thomas, fearing that it would be burglarised in their absence. (Photo: Karl McLarty)

WIKIPEDIA, the free online encyclopaedia, gives the origin of the name Gustav as Swedish. BabyNameCollection says it is French, while BehindTheName and ThinkBabyNames agree that it is German.

Despite the obvious confusion as to the exact country, it is clear that the name, spelt like it is without an 'e' at the end, is of Scandinavian roots.

Gustav, of which there are 16 variants, including Gustave (French), Gustavus (Latin) and Gustavo (Italian), is a masculine name meaning staff of the Goths, staff of the gods or royal staff.

Six kings of Sweden bore the name at different times between 1523 and 1973. Other uses of the name in popular culture included French writer Gustave Flaubert and Gustave, the six metre-long Nile crocodile living in Burundi.
Last night, Tropical Storm Gustav made landfall in Jamaica and was travelling at a mere five miles per hour. It dumped several inches of rain on the island, causing flooding and land slippages in a number of areas.

This year marks the fifth time that the name Gustav has been used for a tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean. The others were in 1984, when the tropical storm hovered over Bermuda, but caused no major damage; 1990 - Hurricane Gustav threatened the Lesser Antilles but turned away before getting close; 1996 - Tropical Storm Gustav formed west of Africa but dissipated soon after; and in 2002 when Hurricane Gustav came within miles of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina before turning away.

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