"John Hall" schreef in bericht :
: Pure guesswork: could the Germans have called it "Cynthia" but that
: looks funny in French so the French renamed in Xynthia?

"Cynthia" does not look funny in French - it is a reasonably well-known name
in France as the relevant page in the French Wikipedia indicates
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia

English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia

I cannot trace the origin of the spelling Xynthia - it may be a Greek
variant. This website
http://www.slsb.lu/prospectivestudents/slsb_gb2006.pdf has an item written
by a Luxembourg student at Stirling University called Xynthia Langers - so
it is evidently a real name !

Storm Xynthia already has its own Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xynthia_(storm)

Colin Youngs
Brussels