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It turns out that the greek word had previously made its way into Persian (tūfān) and from there, to Arabic and Hindi. It may have travelled as far east as Malaysia. And that's the word the Portuguese brought back. Like genealogy, etymology isn't a tree -- it's a graph.
Meanwhile, China has the word 颱風 (táifēng) with basically the same meaning. Pronounced "taifung" in Cantonese. Which transferred to Japanese as 台風. Did the Chinese word come from the Hindi & Arabic word, which itself came from Greek? Can't say for sure, but it seems likely.
In conclusion: if you ever wonder where something comes from, the answer is usually "from 5th century BC Greece"
In Hindi, we have word तूफान (pronounced tūphāna) with the same meaning.
@GylesB1 @susie_dent, what do you say?
Well, Susie?
In Japanese, 台 means base. 風 means wind as you mentioned.
There is a Japanese book called "Etymological relationship between Latin and Japanese (2006)". Many heuristical similarities of words are listed in the book, but as far as I know it wasn't well accepted. This may have to be revisited...
Despite the wrong tone, I actually used "too much wind (太多風)" or "tài duō fēng" to remember "táifēng (颱風)" in chinese. :)
I also wondered why the Japanese 台風 wasn't written 大風 which could be pronounced identically
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