Googling for my edification, posting for yours:
"Hurricanes names are chosen from a list selected by the World Meteorological Organization. The Atlantic is assigned six lists of names, with one list used each year. Every sixth year, the first list begins again. Each name on the list starts with a different letter, for example, the name of the very first hurricane of the season starts with the letter A, the next starts with the letter B, and so on. The letters "Q", "U", "X", "Y" and "Z", however, are not used."
It was a kids site so I won't post the link here...
Here's more about why and how the names were/are chosen:
"No one is exactly sure when hurricanes were first started to be
named. Weather history seems to point to only the biggest
hurricanes being named. It is felt by scientists that the first
person to ever name a hurricane was probably an Australian
scientist named Clement Wragge.
"Scientists feel that Clement had a very interesting way of
choosing his names. It seems that Clement Wragge named
stronger hurricanes after his friends and the weaker hurricanes
after his enemies."
That's from
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art32359.asp and about all I could read since I'm not being paid for this