Hurricane Names

Hurricanes have been on my mind...I guess thats due to the fact that I am now days relying on Google for all my news updates and world news tend to focus more on the hurricanes in the US than say, Indian PM's visit to the US.

A friend asked me if I knew how these names were picked...Katrina first and now Rita...and I wasnt able to answer too satisfactorily...
I guess the people in US are more aware of it than here...the process is a bit funny actually...any depression resulting in wind speeds of over 39 miles/ hr (Categorized as a tropical Storm) gets a name.

Early naming conventions were individualistic in nature. Hurricanes have been named after saints, girlfriends, years, and even first ladies (one was named "Bess" after President Harry Truman's wife, I picked this from the net...:)).
Digressing a little (I read this on the net), according to one report the first use of a proper name for a tropical storm was by an Australian forecaster in the early part of this century, who reputedly named his storms after politicians that he didn't like. Maybe we can loan some names to the storms...:)...and knowing our politicians...they might even forward their names...
Then a more stable naming convention was needed as multiple agencies were following the progress of a storm...so female names were used but after protests...from 1979 both male and female names were used alternatively.
An international committee at a meeting of the World Meteorological Organization came up with six separate name lists for hurricanes. Each list is reused every six years, except for the names that are retired( names of storms that cause a lot of damage are retired, Katrina for example will never be used again!!)
The letters "Q", "U", "X", "Y" and "Z" are not used for naming purposes ( dont knwo why, probably there are not too many names starting with these letters...).

This is the atlantic basin list for 2005:

Arlene	Bret	Cindy
Dennis	Emily	Franklin
Gert	Harvey	Irene
Jose	Katrina	Lee
Maria	Nate	Ophelia
Philippe	Rita	Stan
Tammy	Vince	Wilma

There is another similar list for the Pacific basin...
There, thats the long and short of the naming convention for hurricanes...I hope Rita doesnt turn out to be as bad as the experts are saying...