Naming Warships

[uk 75]

The naming of cats, sorry warships is a curious thing.
I have just read that new US nuclear carriers will be named after Presidents Clinton and G W Bush. For a Brit, politicians are much more controversial figures. The naming of the C class nuclear submarine Churchill was not particularly controversial after his 1965 state funeral. But his opposition to Indian independence and his ill fated Gallipoli landings would make it hard to do so today.
France of course named its postwar carriers after its war leaders: Clemenceau, Foch and De Gaulle. Richelieu always seemed an odd choice for a carrier name but was mentioned for a carrier.
Germany plays it safe by sticking to State and City names. Its three Cold War Adams class destroyers did get the names Lutjens, Rommel and Molders. Naming ships after Third Reich officers seems odd nowadays.
USN warship names have been discussed here before.
Submarines stopped being named after fish when they became capital ships.
Carrier names have been all over the place.
Kennedy started the trend to honour recently dead politicians.
America seems a courageous choice. Germany pointedly renamed its pocket battleship Deutschland in case it got sunk.
Nimitz honoured a WW2 admiral with a capital ship.
Eisenhower carried on the President link.
Only in the US could a carrier be named after someone for supporting its purchase: Carl Vinson.
Since then apart from Enterprise and Doris Miller (A Pearl Harbor African American hero) the Presidents have kept coming.
The Royal Navy's two carriers have names previously worn by battleships (Queen Elizabeth). The new Trident submarines have kept the names of previous submarines taken from battleships (Dreadnought, Valiant, Warspite) but added the new name King George VI for the present King's grandfather.
Would be interesting to hear about other Navies?

 

[GTX]

Australia has a habit of naming after cities (e.g. HMAS Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane...), geographic features (e.g. Gascoyne, Cape Fourcroy etc) or former RAN members of note (e.g. Collins, Rankin etc...)

 

[Desertfox]

US Submarines are a mess. SSBNs as States and SSNs as Cities made sense, but the Virginias have States, people, fish, and now Cities as names. Seawolf is worse with 3 ships and 3 different naming conventions. Lets not get into having two USS George Bush in service at the same time.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Ship naming is inherently political, so you're always going to get some nonsense to satisfy whatever's going on at the time. At least if it's a bad name the ship will be gone in a few decades, which is more than can be said for some other bad decisions.

I do, however, have two modest requests.

First, consistency within a class. Doesn't matter if it's cities, fish, old ships with a distinguished record, or just 'all of these start with D'. Pick a theme for the class and stick to it. SEAWOLF, I'm looking at you.

Second, if you're going to name ships after people, please stick to one name. We don't need things like the ADMIRAL GENERAL CONSTANTINE VON DAUPHIN III THE GREAT knocking around. It's ridiculous.

 

[Arjen]

ADMIRALetc is what some navies find to be just the thing, little we can do about it.
The Culture in one of Iain M Banks' books has the GCU Just Read The Instructions - the Royal Navy's Inflexible and Invincible etc inspired at least one SF writer to introduce Inhospitable.
What is the message you wish to convey with a ship's name?

 

[Scott Kenny]

US Submarines are a mess. SSBNs as States and SSNs as Cities made sense, but the Virginias have States, people, fish, and now Cities as names. Seawolf is worse with 3 ships and 3 different naming conventions.

People in the naming mix is okay. For example, most of the one-off subs in the past were named for people (most, not all).

The original 41 for Freedom SSBNs were all named for famous/infamous revolutionaries, up and down the Americas.

The first 688s got named for the home cities of all 12 of the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and 709 was renamed for Hyman Rickover before official christening.

The Pierwolf class got all messed up when the class was chopped short at the end of the Cold War. Nevermind always keeping the SSN21 numbers. Seawolf (famous "fish"), Connecticut (east coast home of Submarines), and then Jimmy Carter (a Name, but also the only Submarine-qualified President). Couldn't name SSN-22 as Groton, since that was already in use on SSN-694. I don't think "New London" would have flown well, even though that's the official location of the Submarine Base. I think I would have gone with one of the Famous Skippers, like Ned Beach or Dick O'Kane.

But once the SSN21s fucked up the naming, the 774s went for States up through Block IV (barring the second Rickover). Block V is where it got weird: two more states; Barb, Tang, Wahoo, and Silversides (very famous "fish"); another name, and then a bunch of cities. Block VI continues with cities thus far.

Lets not get into having two USS George Bush in service at the same time.

Yeah, that's going to cause issues. I bet that the crews will refer to them as "Cell Block 77" and "Cell Block 83". Or maybe "Senior" and "Junior" if they happen to like the command.

Though I bet the more-official nickname will be "Dubya".