Dear Met Office and Met Éireann

We think it’s great that you’ve asked the British public to #nameourstorms. So we thought we’d weigh in, first with some advice, then with some suggestions.

1. Beware unintended consequences

Here’s some research that shows people aren’t as afraid of storms with female names as the ones with male names. It seems ridiculous but it’s worth looking into.

And if you’re thinking about basing the system on British towns and villages, you should read this blog we wrote about the World Health Organisation’s new naming rules. They launched the rules to stop people naming diseases after places, because those places suffer dips in tourism as a result.

2. Test it out in real life

People are going to suggest lovely naming systems like British foods or British TV shows. But Hurricane Fish ‘n’ Chips destroys village sounds flippant. So we recommend putting all the suggestions through the Daily Mail test.

Here’s what we think you could do

If you want to stick with gendered names, go for something more dramatic than common or garden first names. Ancient gods and goddesses like Artemis, Osiris and Magni would be a good bet. Or if you want to stick closer to home, you could go for Shakespearean names like Iago, Caliban and Goneril.

To avoid the gender danger altogether, you could go with colours or British surnames (famous or otherwise).

Thanks for reading. We can’t wait to see what you choose.

* If you just want a system that’s going to be super organised, you could copy NASA’s approach to naming comets by creating a sort of code: a letter describing the type of storm followed by the date it started. So G090915 would be a gale that started on 9th September 2015.

We know that’s not as attention-grabbing as Titus, for example. But you’ll never run out of names to choose from and there’s no danger of flippancy.