‘It could have been Montgomery Wobblebottom’: Stephen King and others bemoan Hurricane Milton having the worst name imaginable and offer much better solutions

The southeastern part of the United States is not doing great. Historic Hurricane Helene pretty much wiped Asheville, North Carolina off the map and seriously affected coastal cities all throughout Florida. Now Hurricane Milton is threatening to do the same. It’s a tough time, but that doesn’t mean we can find a little levity in the situation. Like, Milton?? That’s what we named this hurricane? Really?

We’re not the only ones scratching our heads over this one. Horror author Stephen King chimed in about the weird name, calling out the obvious. Not known to be a man of few words, King is surprisingly succinct in his evaluation of the name. A friendly commenter agreed and offered a name that’s 100 times better.

Someone else revealed they had a relative that shared the name of the last hurricane, so maybe Milton was better because it’s not as common of a nomenclature. Understandably, she’s not loving the comparison.

It was also pointed out that Milton brings to mind one of the most unforgettable characters in the cult 1999 film Office Space, indelibly rendered by Stephen Root. While that Milton was seemingly soft-spoken, he also wreaked a lot of havoc at the end of the film.

The riffs off this particular response are top notch.

To be honest, it’s hard to picture anything else now when someone mentions the name. Don’t take his stapler!

Ready for an esoteric reference? One of the most famous Miltons in history was a little chocolatier and philanthropist from a little town in Pennsylvania called Hershey.

Of course, we can’t mention a hurricane without mentioning former President Donald Trump.

How about a Trump/Office Space/Milton meme? This one goes hard!

This begs the question, why Milton? How are these things named anyway? Turns out, Storms are actually named by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which has a rotating list of names it it uses. The names are pre-chosen and alternate male and female to help news organizations identify them easily and quickly.

The naming system for hurricanes, also known as tropical cyclones, has changed a bit over the years. During World War II, they would correspond with radio codes for letters of the alphabet, like Able, Baker and Charlie. Female names started popping up in 1952. The lists are reused every six years, meaning the 2024 list was used in 2018. If a storm is super deadly it will be retired from the list, like Katrina from 2005. If there are more storms than names on the list in a given year, they switch to Greek letters.

Since we’re on M with Milton, that means we still have eight more names to go this year (there’s no X, Y and Z). These names are Nadine, Oscar, Patty, Rafael, Sara, Tony, Valerie and William. These names are decidedly less boring and aged than Milton, but seeing as the list has been in circulation since the ’50s, couldn’t it use some freshening up?

It’s got to be only a matter of time before we see Hurricane Kayleigh, Raine, Chad, and Neville Longbottom, right?