Ship Naming Conventions

It's not an exhaustive list. I just felt the need to get some Britain up in here. Why must the US have such pleb tier ship names. We build a fucking nuclear powered floating island with enough boom on it to render a continent barren and we name it after a guy most famous for falling off Air Force One.

Only came here to mention Culture ships. Recently discovered Iain M. Banks and I am loving his writing. My favorites are A Frank Exchange Of Views (a warship), Grey Area (an AI that specializes in looking into the brains and manipulating the dreams of organics, also called Meatfucker by the other ships) and Anticipation of A New Lover's Arrival, The.

My party in the stars without number game im running named their old beater frigate the Rusty Shackleford. I only hate them a little.

Because we're confident enough to not have to posture with overly-dramatic names a 13-year-old would give his Sonic OCs.

I like hull numbers. It's impersonal and reflects the people in charge consider important.

A fleet that only numbers destroyers and corvettes? Pretty reasonable. Light units produced in large numbers, DDE 145 lets a person know instantly what they are talking about.

Numbered frigates and light cruisers without official names? Feels like anything lighter then a capital ship is considered irrelevant, or one that fights a war intense enough that giving names to sub-capital ships is no longer considered worthwhile.

With capital ships? It feels like the whole fleet is just a brutal machine where ships, people and everything else are just interchangeable cogs.

Just make sure to explain that just because one is marked BB 67 doesn't mean that the fleet has 67 battleships. Hull numbers aren't reused. BB 1 was likely retired a century ago.

>And the last species, which is an anarco-capitalist hellhole that barely survives because nobody wants to touch it and risk losing their assets the next time a random citizen drops the antimatter nuke he decided to buy on the free market last week.
No convention because all the ships are privately owned and so are given names by their owners, each of which have different preferences for naming things.

But you're wrong.

I'll go with Greek. I was only thinking Sanskrit because it provides more of a bridge between east and west, which is important to humans in setting because a major theme is that most people in setting forget about relatively trivial racial issues when there are species issues to worry about. Greek stuff, as you said, is just more recognizable by my audience. I'll look up some Ayn Rand stuff to see if there's anything that I like for individual ship names, but I don't think it would work for class names.

I'll definitely do that for individual names. I love kinda in your face Easter eggs like that, but they're just too long-winded for class names.

Those are all the kind of thing I'll be using for the fascist empire, but "dreadnought" is reserved for the size class that is larger than a battleship.

The immortal king is the kind of guy who would name his ships really edgy stuff. He's gone a bit mad in his infinite age.

I really like Fauxhimmel.

I debated using German tank numbering for human dreadnoughts, or something like that. One kind a confusing thing is that I'm throwing together ship CLASS names and proper ship names as well. There are some nations that would definitely use simple letter-number combos for ship names, but they would never use that for a class name.

For instance, as previously decided, humans will now use Greek class names. Their largest two dozen or so ships are named after American mountain ranges, Russian military victories, ancient Chinese admirals, or horrific WW1 battles fought in France (depending on where their home base is). So there is a Typhon-class dreadnought named the "Poltava" that makes patrols from its base in the Russian wing of Earth's orbital shipyards.
Thank you all for your help, it's been of great use.

>thunderchild
Good shit

Ancap Hell hole names:
>Private Vessel
>Duct tape and dreams
>Inflammable means flammable?
>Lone wolf
>Lone wolf 2
>not a pirate
>Sir this is a mutiny
>Radiation shielding cost extra
>The ship formerly known as Prince
>Horse drawn hyperdrive
>Unsinkable III

Could also name them after heroes of homeric legend
>Odysseus
>Telemachus
>Achilles
>Helen
>Nestor
>Atlas

Here's just a few cool names I've used before
>Glass Duke
>Flare Rider
>Terminal Horizon
>Bolt-popper
>Ferryman
>Belt Shredder (Mining vessel)

>heroes of homeric legend
>atlas
what?

>not naming them copyright-distinct versions

The Red Monarch is unironically a great name for a ship.

aw bugger sorry it's like three am and it sounded cool

Halo ships.

>Shadow of Intent
>Long Night of Solace
>Two For Flinching
>Pillar of Autumn
>Forward Unto Dawn
>Point of No Return

I also liked how UNSC vehicles were named after animals and Covenant vehicles were named after angels and undead.

>Infinity

Why did such a cool ship get such a comparatively lame name?

>forgetting Spirit of Fire

Any ideas for honorable warriors?

I have things like Glory, and Nobility but i'm having trouble coming up with anymore.

>they're just too long-winded for class names
Yeah I usually save the long names for the individual ships. For class names, I always go for a single word, or 2 words if I'm feeling adventurous.

Are you looking for ship type names or individual ship names?

You could go with virtues, or qualities, or trials a warrior should withstand.

>Humility
>Perseverance
>Mercy
>Ascetic
>Solitude
>Fearless
>Tribulations
>Vicissitudes
Etc. I couldn't come up with anything good but maybe this will help you think of something. In retrospect those are all more warrior monk than warrior noble.

Please tell me you throw extermination jobs their way.

This is how you end up with the trek universe

Something I've noticed but I'm not sure it's legit: US attack helicopters are named after native tribes we went to war with, transport helicopters are named after native tribes we had peace treaties with.

I'm in a game, custom setting, and my faction does this kid of thing. Only ships that have survived a battle get an on the books name, and even then its just randomly pulled from the list of valid first names and registered last names.

>Infinity
>cool

>pic
"Hey Corporal, you ever think that maybe we're the bad guys?"
"We've confirmed that there are no children present, that's just a dog. Go ahead and launch the Hellfire missile."

>not naming ships after regions or past rulers like almost every real-world nation

So your super ships would be Rocky, Sierra, Appalachian, and Smoky?

>Appalachian, and Smoky
Mountains, not hills.

Just inspiration for individual names.

Thank you so much. I've been working on my setting for the past week and I think I just couldn't think of anything.

Okay, then maybe...

Crazy, Bear, and Big Horn, plus individual peaks like Rainier, McKinley, and St. Helens

I'd insist on Mount St. Helens especially because you've always got to have one "bad luck ship" in every fleet.

Ditto Maunaloa and Kilauea

>The Bigger Boat
>Idiot Box
>Noob Tube
>Tin Can
>Idiotmobile
>Are We There Yet?

>All Under Heaven
>Bum Rush
>Say My Name
>Heart of Midlothian
>Euclid's Anvil
>Do You Feel Lucky?
>Eminent Domain
>Lance Held High
>Of Uncommon Courage
>Sagan Blue
>Walk of Shame
>Point of No Return
>Wink of an Eye
>Ready or Not
>Aegis Fate
>Armageddon's Edge
>Day Tripper
>Truth and Reconciliation
>Rapid Conversion
>Retribution's Thunder
>Bloodied Spirit
>Minor Transgression
>A Psalm Every Day
>Infinite Spoils

I'm really loving these names

>Day Tripper
Is there also one called Norwegian Wood?

>Infinity
>cool
It takes "carrier" to the next level. Forget carrying just fighters, the Infinity carries it's own escort frigates. Besides that, it's hard to argue with the UNSC's big floating Freudian nightmare design where ships are basically giant railguns with engines and armor strapped on.

I went with Absaroka, Sierra, Sangre de Cristo, Rockey, Zuni, and Appalachia for the USA
Poltava, Peipus, Ugra, Kursk, Molodi, and Kulikovo for Russia.
Sa Zhenbing, Zheng He, Deng Zilong, Hong Bao, Liu Buchan, and Shi Lang for China.
Argonne, Passchendaele, Verdum, Arras, Ardennes (yes I know it doesn't fit), and Marnes.

>Stalwart
>Defiant
>Enduring
>Blood of Heroes
>Dying Breath
>Disregarded Demand
>Unto the Grave
>Jaws of Victory
>Agent of History
>March to (whatever the afterlife is called for your culture)
>Final Command

>>The ship formerly known as Prince

Halo UNSC-style names are awesome. In Amber Clad, Spirit of Fire. I also like BattleTech naming conventions reflecting our modern systems but blending different cultures for reference material, both Clan and IS.

Battleship with a massive Halo/Mass Effect spinal rail gun
Name: Issac Says Hi.

I fool my enemy by naming my ships like this

One
Two
Forty
Eleven Million Seven Hundred Thousand Two Hundred Twenty Two
and so on

I think "Newton's Greeting" would be more poetic.

>tfw so autistic when it comes to worldbuilding that you list a 400 ship navy complete with classes and names for every single vessel
the information was never even used because the next campaign took place 200 years later

The funny thing is, in some multiplayer 4x games I've played I've found this to be a valid tactic. When I know for a fact that another guy has like 6 ships that he's retrofitted about 5 times it's a very solid way to ensure he leaves me alone if I "accidentally" let him see my one and only battleship named "Gen. 11, BB-20."

If I had wanted to go poetic I would have gone with "Newton's Regard" or "Ultima Ratio Newton" (Newton's last argument, based on "Ultima ratio regnum" or "last argument of kings" which used to be inscribed on cannons).
That also adds another bad ass name
"Ultima Ratio Hominis" Last argument of men

But I bet you had fun doing it, and probably came up with little stories for some of the ships with the best names (If I were to do that I would end up with shit like "there has been a destroyer named Thunderchild in the navy of the the Iridian System for 150 years, after a particularly spectacular ramming action by the first ship of that name made it through the shields of an enemy dreadnaught, allowing her fellows to pour fire through the hole and salvage a losing battle)

That's a crack-up. What game?

Anyway, I've been playing Rule the Waves and the boring fucking names that everyone but the Brits and to a lesser extent the French use makes it harder to play as anyone else.

I would go with hero name at location of great battle like
Markis at red river
Fillip at Waterloo
Stuff in memory of heros and the battles they fight

I used to post on a cooperative rp board (nationstates if you know what that is) about running your own country, ended up having a fuckin massive navy which I named a couple hundred of.

I used the names of battles, the names of generals, names of weapons both real and legendary (i.e. the Warhammer and the Mjolnir), types of warrior and various heroes (Paladin/Pollux), mythological references (Fenris), natural disasters (Avalanche), the proper British adjective/noun type names because Indefatigable is an awesome name for a ship, concepts (i.e. the Solitude), phrases that sounded suitably portentous (Justice Be Done, Hammer of Wrath) and, finally, back when said navy had SSBNs I named those after synonyms for the apocalypse because I wasn't rping a particularly subtle nation.

Eventually gave up doing this when the exponential population growth of ns states meant I had a navy with a few thousand capital ships and couldn't be fucked naming any more.

Jalad at Tanagra

I've been looking at adopting a retired racing greyhound and some of their names would be fantastic ship names.

>Rido's Gambler
>USS Treasure
>Gable Dodge
>Somebody's Honey
>Cara's Runabout
>Clay Pioneer
>Delgadina Valee
>Flying Penske
>Rooster's Spur
>Marine Maiden
>Fast N Loose
>HB Commander
>Pink Sunshine
>Go Bon Blackout

It Was a Good Day
Regulator
Until the End of Time
Die Like a Rockstar
None Shall Pass
Doomsday
Bring the Pain
People of the Sun

I Fought the Law
Where Eagles Dare
Lust for Life
Cherry Bomb
Sonic Reducer
Minor Threat
Marquee Moon
Bad Mouth

Disparate Youth
Sedona
Everlasting Light
Shooting Stars
Midnight City
Sweet Disposition
Walking on a Dream
Wave of Mutliation
Silver Lining

Short Change Hero
Smooth Sailing
Goodbye Babylon
Blue Lightning
Cosmic Love
Happy Idiot
Sinister Kid
Midnight Creeper

Ramble On
Black Dog
Kashmir
Red House
Wild Horses
Sympathy for the Devil
Street Fighting Man

Dragon Queen
Gold Lion
Alameda
Blue Orchid
Red Rain
Black Math
Mairead
Poison Ivy
Song for the Dead
Bulldog Front
Margin Walker

just from ripping off song titles.

My civilian ships are all names in -ics words. Rethorics, Athletics, Statistics, etc. Warships are named after time divisions. Minute, Hour, Monday, February, etc.
Dumb and limited but anyone can identify a ship quickly.

>CTRL-F "Gravitas"
>0 results

Experiencing a significant gravitas shortfall ITT.

Any kind of mythological or antiquity references are always great

Depends on the setting.

If they're alien ships, I like to use gibberish names that don't have an actual meaning, but which do follow an obvious pattern. For example, If the players know of three alien ships that are called Grf'Herlkr, Grf'Bozzm and Grf'Zavtk, you can expect them to realize that when they overhear someone talking about Grf'Burbbl, they're probably talking about the same type of spaceship as the first three.

>Two For Flinching

>Humans
You can never go wrong with Gods, and if you want the 'United' theme.
Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, Horus etc could be the Capital Carriers,
Hermes, Anansi and Loki can be the quick Corvettes,
and so forth.

>Anarco-capitalist
Threatening Color + Threatening Animal
Red Viper
Orange Falcon
Golden Bear
etc

They've been said already, but I love the UNSC:
>halo.wikia.com/wiki/UNSC_Starships

I'd make the humans a mix of idioms and important persons/dates, a la UNSC. Personally, I'd even make them almost innocuous to those not "in the know", with the idea that they would earn their fear and respect without needing a 'scary' or impressive sounding name.

For the anarcho-capitalist ships, I might go for a mish mash of things that almost sound like the other Empires', like those who bought a fancy ship and want to sound really impressive, things that seem like they would almost-but-not-quite fit the naming conventions of the other groups, things that sound just a little 'wrong'. With people wanting to flaunt their power and wealth, but not actually belonging to the groups that actually have power and wealth, and so don't really understand all of the conventions and thought processes.

I also really like the idea of humanoid or animalistic spaceships, especially massive and mobile ones.

>Unsinkable III
My favourite.

>No Feliz
Disappointing, desu.

>implying the Culture isn't an oligarchy ruled by the Minds

>Victory at C
>No Grave but at C

and so on are ones I'm fond of

That sounds like an absolute blast. And hey, if you ever need a random table for ship names for another game, you already have one. Waste not want not.

It almost shows a progression of your nation. From a smaller but highly militarized state that has a proud tradition of war and takes care that it gives its troops the respect and honor that they deserve to a dominating titan that only needs results.

I first stared thinking about this when I was on a Supreme Commander FA kick. One faction has very alien names, but some of them get lost in the mix because people can't pronounce all of them. For instance, their biggest mech is called a "Ythotha", but everyone calls it a chicken. Their biggest bomber is the "Ahwassa" but everyone calls it the T4 Bomber or the Ass-Washer.

>Threatening Color + Threatening Animal
Could work. Thanks.

I used to name them after literary characters, but this method is great as well. Stealing it.

archastra is vaguely palatable, but they're all kind of trash. sorry.

I'm a fan of smashing two words together, and mythical references for ship names.

Augur - Carrier
Ironbreaker - Dreadnought (Whfb reference)
Manticore - Battleship
Iron Bitch - Battleship
Green Goddess - Heavy Cruiser
Hammer, Axe and Blade for one of my cruiser groups

>The name of the ship is "oнa oднa из нaших cэp", which translates to "she's one of ours sir", sir.
>But it doesn't matter what name is written on the hull, because we identified it by infrared an hour ago, and launched missiles twenty minutes ago.

And then some just have random animal names like Cobra, Dolphin, and Sea/Super Stallion

There's only so many tribes, user.

wouldn't that work better as the joke name for the gun itself, that has a seriously bland name like "Induction System, Heavy"

I find naming ships after polearms works quite well, and there's a surprisingly large list to choose from. HMS Fauchard, HMS Svärdstav, HMS Brandistock, HMS Ahlspiess etc. You can even have the obligatory quirky name with the Bohemian Earspoon.

I haven't really been able to figure a good naming convention for human ships. For alien ships I decided the English names for ship classes are identification names used by humans, and so don't correspond to the names of individual vessels. But for humans I'd liek to follow a real world naming convention and have each ship in the same class named after a specific thing. I though using celestial bodies, but there really aren't enough unless you want ships named "GXZ-33317" or whatever ID code a random asteroid might have. Mythical heroes seems like a good theme, as there's a lot to choose from and generally would cause less controversy than naming them after real people (as there's plenty of famous figures idolised in one nation but hated in another). But then I'd still have to figure a good way to differentiate different ship types (destroyers, cruisers, battleships, etc.).

Incidentally, the naming conventions I'ved used for alien empires are Latin words referring to role/profession (i.e. Venator, Gladiator), mythical creatures associated with water (i.e. Naiad, Siren), and prehistoric, mostly Cambrian, invertebrates (i.e. Marella, Opabinia).

>Invincible
I feel like naming your ship "invincible" is a bad idea
Like naming a ship "will totally never hit an iceberg and sink like a rock"

Trapped in the Closet
American Idiot
These Cannons were made for shootin'
Big Iron
Mothers Little Helper
Good Golly Miss Molly
Mr. Sandman
The Wanderer
Son of a Preacher Man
Aint that a Kick in the Head
Sound of Silence
Pumped up Kicks

The vast majority of these song ship names are gay as fuck

It ain't gay if it's underway, user.

First one can go with martial arts moves, or ancient war themes like: Phalanx, Hoplite, Iron fist, etc.

Second can go with abbreviation, like STFU, ACAB or protest symbolics.

Are you telling me that I can fuck a man and not be gay as long as I never stop?
Also, I think No Homo would be an entertaining name for a ship with a halo-esque big spinal gun

Gank Bait is best ship name

In My setting, the biotechnology focused nation use names of famous monsters for their fleets: Leviathan, Dagon, Behemoth, Niddhog.

The Terran Federation uses Old Terra mythology and ancient history. Battlefleet Olympus for example, has Zeus as it's flagship and the three other main battleships are named Sparta, Athena and Poseidon. The cruisers and frigates are named after greek mythos: Minotaur, Chimera. The smaller torpedos, sloops, are named after famous greek generals and philosophers. All fighters and smaller crafts then are named Hoplite with a number and organized in phalanx, which are wings.

For battlefleet asgards, the convention follows
Gods > Creatures > Characters > Viking X (for fighters

There's battlefleet Jade, which uses china as inspiration, battlefleet Nippon (once exception since the Flagship is called Yamato rather than Amateratsu, but the rest follow the same logic), and Battlefleet Keltoi, which uses clets names.

For the Republic, a militaristic civilization, as ships are named after great republican heroes, and also instruments or war or concepts. RSS Heroic, RSS Saber etc.

And finally for the celestian Empire, each ship is given the name of some natural phenomenah and nature based things. Mountain, Typhon, Cascade, Storm, etc.

The phrase means that it's not gay as long as you're on a long voyage and there's no women . I do like your interpretation though.
I would prefer Not Compensating For Anything for a ship with a big spinal gun.

One naming convention I quite like is the biggest human ships in Schlock Mercenary, which were initially built to prevent asteroid impacts and were as such named after impact craters: Tunguska, Sudbury, Morokweng

An idea I'd had/seen for a civ that made ships by basically slapped engines, guns and crew quarters in asteroids was to name them after mountains - either as an approximation of size, or just because they're 90% rock - light cruiser Snowdon, Atlas-class battleship Kilimanjaro, fleet flagship Olympus, supercarrier Chomolungma.
Ships fitted with the most devastating weapons or the largest warships would be named after volcanos, possibly scaled to power/death toll - Vesuvius, St Helens, Krakatau, Yellowstone etc.

>Red Dwarf
>Blue Midget

Only cool people will know those ones.

SS If We Dont Spend our Budget We Get Cuts Next Fiscal Year

For humans, ships classes named after animals that would represent their size, agility, and speed. i.e., a Mammoth-class ship would be a fuckhueg freighter made for long hauls, a Sparrow-class would be short range a one man fighter, a Stallion-class would be a sizable ship with with a small crew used for passenger transport, ect.

The not-Germans in my space setting do that despite Earth being a thing of myth.
>Danzig
>Krakau
>Leibnitz
>Zürich
>Essen
Also norse gods and stuff
>Rheingold
>Valküre
>Wotan
>Donar
>Hel

For freelancers I keep slipping into alliterations.
>Rowdy Rogue
>Creepy Companion
>Dangerous Dumpster
>Fighting Freighter
>Jovial Jester

Another faction names:
Corvettes after Knifes
Frigates after Swords
Destroyers after Polearms
Capital ships after Heroes

Ancap ships should probably have several different classing systems due to the multiple companies producing ships. Humans should go with great events, places, and people in human history, to exemplify their humanity

My players like to remind me every time i rip something off of something else so i can't name anything after anything even if i haven't even seen the source material. I'd resort to songs but one of my players is the guy who got me into jojo, so i can't name anything after a reference up to the end of part 4.

Got any good ideas for a song to name a train after?

>Titanic XXVII