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Storms and hurricanes are given names, with storms Freya, Gareth and Hannah among those hitting the UK this year. But should heatwaves be named too?

It's an idea being put forward by the London School of Economics (LSE), which says that doing so would encourage people to take the extreme heat more seriously.

This week, the UK has experienced it's hottest day of the year, and today we could even see the hottest temperatures on record.

But the university LSE says not enough has been done to warn people about how dangerous heatwaves can be - and it wants to see official names given to periods of extremely hot weather.

The Met Office (the UK's national weather service) decided to start giving names to storms back in 2014, just like what happens in the US.

The first windstorm to be named was Abigail on 10 November 2015.

It was hoped that naming big storms like this will make people more aware of them and how dangerous they can be.

Another reason was to make it easier to follow the progress of a storm on the TV, radio or on social media, if it has a name.

So would it help if heatwaves were treated in the same way?

Grantham Research from the Institute on Climate Change and the Environment said: "Far more people have died from recent heatwaves than from storms, so it should be uncontroversial to start applying names to both."

"The government and its agencies, including the Met Office, must lead the way in communicating the growing dangers of heatwaves so that the British public are better informed and can protect themselves."

What do you think about the idea of giving names to heatwaves? Let us know in the comments below.