"In 1977, NOAA made the decision to relinquish control over the name selection by allowing a regional committee of the World Meteorological Organization to select the new sets of names which would contain male names and some Spanish and French names in order to reflect all the cultures and languages within the Atlantic Ocean. The World Meteorological Organization decided that the new lists of hurricane name would start to be used in 1979. Since 1979 the same lists have been used, with names of significant tropical cyclones removed from the lists and replaced with new names."
my favorite Cajun "Richard", whom we named our son after :)