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Winter storm Jaxon? Skylar? Names create blizzard of jokes

The Weather Channel continues its controversial naming of winter storms, and this year's trendy list has played soccer with your kid.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper

On Thursday, the Weather Channel released the list of names it will use to identify 2017-2018 winter storms  And if you know a kid born in or after the year 2000, you might feel like one or more of these upcoming storms is living in your house.

Jaxon. Skylar. Dylan. Riley. Aiden. They're names you might see on a third-grade soccer roster.

Oliver. Quinn. Liam. Ethan. Toby. Violet. Once they might've been your grandparents, but now they're so trendy the kids bearing them probably have to use initials to mark their Minecraft Creeper backpacks.

The Weather Channel started naming major winter storms in 2011, and it's similar but not related to the hurricane and tropical storm names assigned by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization. The names aren't officially sanctioned by any government body, but the channel uses them when reporting on weather events.

While the hurricane names are a mix of grandparent names (Irma, Harvey) and more common monikers (Sean, Cindy), the winter storm names could've come straight off a what-to-name-your-baby list from 2007. People noticed.

Some people were either thrilled or horrified to find their own names on the list.

Some took the Weather Channel to task for naming storms at all.

But maybe the most (least?) popular name on the list was Winter Storm Toby, which reminded fans of "The Office" of a certain HR manager who drove Michael Scott crazy.