British people tried to name storms and came up with the most ridiculous suggestions

You won't believe some of these

British people tried to name storms and came up with the most ridiculous suggestions

If the whole Boaty McBoatface debacle proved anything, it’s that British people cannot be trusted to take anything seriously.

Not even actual serious things that deserve serious attention, such as potentially deadly storms. No, they had to try and take it too far again, didn’t they.

The start of this month marked the beginning of the new storm season with the Met Office and Met Eireann selecting 21 names to give to new storms - the idea behind naming them being to give the storms greater awareness, so that people know they’re coming and can prepare appropriately.

This year’s names are: Aileen, Brian, Caroline, Dylan, Eleanor, Fionn, Georgina, Hector, Iona, James, Karen, Larry, Maeve, Niall, Octavia, Paul, Rebecca, Simon, Tali, Victor and Winifred.

Before the first season that storms were named - October 2015 to September 2016 - the Met Office used social media to garner suggestions, with 10,000 submissions eventually coming in.

And, yes, you guessed it - a lot of them were completely stupid.

A Freedom of Information Request found that names that were discounted because they were not ‘proper’ names included:

Armegeddon

Apocalypse

Baldrick

BigBoss

Bilbo

BlackHeart

Bluetooth

branchwobbler

Cyclops

Dark Bloom

Excalibur

Freebooter

Forkbeard

Gale

Gnasher

Goliath

Goldeneye

Hades

Hammer

Holy Flying Circus

ForkBeard

Howitzer

Icy

In A Teacup(or Ena Tee Cup)

Jelbuoy

King Henry V

Hot Brew

Kraken

leaf shaker

leaf stripper

Lionheart

Maelstrom

Magneto

Megatron

Melbourne

Minatour

MrBrown

NastyBoy

Oblivion

Noddy

Poacher

Power

Poplar

Polaris

rootripper

QueenVictoria

Skylab

Smaug

Splasher

Stairrod

Stomp

Stormageddon

Sssweetcaroline

Swoosh

Tempest

Tetley

Thrasher

Thumper

Tiger

Torch

trunktrembler

Twizzle

Typhoon

Valkyrie

Vader

Voldemort

Wheatherwax

Wookie

Zebedee

Actually, now we’ve thought about it, how good would it have been to have Storm Megatron winding its way towards you?

And what nonsense about them not being proper names: King Henry V and Queen Victoria were definitely real people and those were their names. Poplar’s a place name too. I’ve been there. It’s one of the best bits of the Docklands Light Railway, that would have been great.

A missed opportunity, ‘The Met Office’, and we hope you’ll reconsider for next September.

(Image: iStock)