In the past storms had to be at least tropical storms to rate a name. Now even a tropical depression has a name, leading to far more named storms than in the past. Duh!
The powers that be count on people being ignorant. Kind of like the SAT's "recentering" done in the mid-nineties, I think. It's simply no longer mentioned when doing comparisons.
Actually, A tropical depression doesn’t garner a name unless it at first used to be a tropical storm.
I think you’re referring to subtropical storms, which are tropical storms with cold cores instead of warm cores.