It was'nt 2 hurricanes "merging", it was a hurricane and strong anti-cyclonic system coming off land that "merged". Something you do not see often...hardly ever in history.
What do you call it when a large company buys off a smaller company? That would be the appropiate scenario.
There's an immense amount of misunderstanding and mythology about the perfect storm; it really wasn't all that much of a merger; what was unusual about it was it moving westwards while off of Nova Scotia.
It was a completely non-tropical Noreaster in every way.
However, AFTER it had done all of it's damage, sunk the Andrea gale, and moved SW to off of New Jersey, a tropical system formed in the middle of it; the so called "Unnamed Hurricane" (NHC deliberately didn't name it in order not to confuse the public, a long and complicated story.)
One of the storms will be unemployed???