Deathdealer from The Armageddon Inheritance
Death of Worlds, from the Warhammer 40k game ( don’t play but I’ve heard the name )
Cornucopia of Goods at Excellent Prices, from the Haviland Tuf stories.
Shining in the Void, from the Island Worlds series.
As said, the Culture books have lots of cool ship names. Wikipedia has a list.
Sovereign of Space from the Honor Harrington series.
This happened in '88, too, I believe. My ship was doing LEO (Law Emforcement Ops) with the hydrofoils at the time. Might have been your guy’s Pegasus (there were only 6 of them, so chances are good). Chunks o’whale can mess up a turbine engine!
It took me a google to find it.
Bucky O’Hare’s spaceship, “Righteous Indignation”
Anybody else wish they could “re-frag” their grey matter?
For reasons which someone who knows Japanese could probably explain, numerous Japanese ships are named “Fuk-something”. There’s the “Fukkue”, numerous “Fukuyu [something]”'s etc.
I know someone who’s yacht is named “The Office”. Useful when explaining to your wife where you are.
“College Fund” on a 30 foot yacht made me smile.
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There’s a bar in Cleveland with the same name, for the same reason.
I was always partial to Hot Needle of Inquiry, myself.
It’s undeniably catchy, but I already had several Ob’enn ships with similarly vivid names in the post, and I didn’t want to overdo it. 
There used to be a bar in LA called the “Branch Office”
Several U.S. Navy ships have gained nicknames based on their history, and they’ve never been shaken. For example:*
After the infamous flight deck incident, the carrier Forrestal became Forest Fire.
When several of her sailors were separated for homosexuality, Kearsarge became Queersarge.
For obvious reasons, Willamette became We’llRamIt.
*My examples are unfortunately many years out of date. I’ve been a civilian a long time.
Well, if you look at the Japanese trawler I’d mentioned: Daigo Fukuryu Maru, I’ll give it a try.
I’ve got the English translation of the name, and one bit of knowledge that can help me parse it. First, the English language name is Lucky Dragon #5. And the phoneme “ryu” often means dragon.
So it seems that Fukuryu then refers to a lucky dragon, or a dragon of luck. Which implies that fuku represents at least one Japanese word for luck.
Which isn’t the least useful trait to wish to instill upon a ship.
A few years ago, folks moored in the same harbor as ours had set their anchor poorly, and their yacht was dragged right through the harbor overnight – thankfully, narrowly missing the boats in its path.
Its name? Sea Dragon.
I kid you not.
I named all the cruisers in my Battlefleet Gothic fleet after the ships in Starship Troopers.
The Rodge is a Fast Corvette – a smaller ship – and Rico explains that all the small ships are given the names of soldiers or military leaders, like the Rodger Young, Geronimo, Xenephon, and Audie Murphy. The larger ships are named for historic battlefields; Waterloo, Ypres, Valley Forge, and so on.
There’s a scene where, after recovering from an injury during “Operation Royalty”, Rico sees the fleet assembled outside in nearby space, and explains to a fellow soldier that he thinks there ought to be one called the Ramon Magsaysay, too.
Does “Maru” indicate that it is a merchant vessel?
Honestly? I don’t know exactly what “maru” indicates or means. I think it’s an indicator of a non-warship, but I won’t swear to that. (I say non-warship, instead of merchant vessel, since ISTR that several cargo vessels operated by the Japanese Navy during WWII had the “maru” suffix. Check out the list of ships sunk at Truk Lagoon.
The Otiose Rehearsal.
Just because it tickled me when I found that the word otiose had come from a word meaning ‘leasure’ and that one archaic meaning for it is ‘idle’.
And I don’t know if it would work for a boat, but there used to be a video game parlor in Davis that was named The Library. I always enjoyed that.
That’s my understanding, too. I know of no Japanese warships of any era that use(d) the “maru” suffix. I remember reading years ago that it roughly translates as “Ship named [blank].”
I always thought HMS Splendid sounded like, well, a splendid ship to serve on. The Royal Navy has had some quite appropriate names for their ships over the years, Vengance, Revenge, Erebus etc.
Other than that, we thought my sister’s name, Síofra, was pretty uncommon until we saw a Mini driver with the name on their registration plate and a boat in Kinsale Co. Cork named the same.
Borage, Pennywort, Bluebell, Geranium…
Yep, those are real WWII British navy ship names. Flower-class corvettes.
