Real or fictional, star-, air-, or sea-, funny or unique: come one, come all! Try to avoid macho fist-pumping military names like Dauntless or Intrepid.
Tom Strange, of the ABC comic book Terra Obscura, had a spaceship called Strange Adventure. I’ve always loved this name, and if I ever fulfill my dream of owning a sailboat, that’s what I’ll call it.
In Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld books, Sam Clemens had a riverboat called Not For Hire and its launch was called the Post No Bills.
I always liked that the “runabouts” in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were named after Earth rivers. The Ganges, the Orinoco, the Rubicon were all names of DS9 runabouts.
HMS Surprise has been both a real and a fictional Royal Navy vessel.
When I was in the Navy I found it amusing that so many of our nation’s ships are named after landlocked cities or states.
The main character in Michael Connelly’s book Blood Work lives on a boat named The Following Sea, which is but one of the many lovely poetic touches in what is otherwise a relatively hard-boiled serial killer story.
Standard disclaimer whenever I mention Blood Work: Please read the book. Please don’t see the movie – before, during, or after reading the book. What Eastwood did to that novel should be prosecutable as some form of rape.
I’ve always been partial to the classical name “Argo” from Jason and the Argonauts. It conjures up visions of wine dark seas and high adventure. When I get my boat, it will be named Argo!
Up here a couple of years ago I saw a very nice sailboat. On the stern was Campbell’s Sloop, and it was done in the Campbell’s script.
But the one I really liked was a small open sloop Spiny Norman and I saw as we were kayaking in Marina del Rey. It’s name was Fred. It was the perfect name for that boat.
Largo’s ship in the James Bond novel and film Thunderball sounds romantic – the Disco Volante.
Translated to English (as they did in the remake, Never Say Never Again it loses a lot of the romance – the Flying Saucer.
Isn’t there a reference somewhere in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the HMS Illustrious, the HMS Dauntless, and the HMS Suicidal Insanity, or something like that?
I saw this one while I was fishing in BC - “Irene’s Mink” I have sometimes wondered if she ever did get the mink.
The other featured large in Gerald Durell’s “My Family and Other Animals” - the “Bootle Bumtrinket” . Its portrayal in a BBC adapatation was exactly how I had imagined it to look.
I like the ships (etc.) in Iain M Banks’ culture novels - they’re often named with witty, pithy little phrases like ‘So Much For Subtlety’, ‘Bad For Business’ or ‘It Was Like That When I Got Here’