Very interesting. BTW, they did more than look at name-death toll correlations in real hurricanes. They also conducted controlled lab experiments in which they created hypothetical scenarios about impending hurricanes, where only the hurricane name was changed. Subjects didn't know the names had any importance, but judged hurricanes with female names as less intense and said they would be less likely to seek shelter or evacuate. Also, the more masculine and feminine the names, the bigger the difference the names made.
One interesting thing is that male names tend to start and end with hard consonant sounds (Mark, Luke, Jim, John, Rick), while female names are more likely to begin and/or end with a soft vowel sound (Alice, Amber, Mary, Laura, Aria) . Obviously, there are exceptions, but on average this is the case. It isn't implausible that just the hard or soft sounds of these words could evoke emotive reactions that impact such judgments, independent of gender stereotypes.
