Re this wiki the Chinese Nuclear submarines are apparently not referred to by anything other than number. Do the Chinese “name” their large naval ships after cities or people or even concepts like other countries?
Yup, it’s a naval tradition going back thousands of years, to the Egyptians.
Far as I know from what I’ve read, the Chinese have 3 nuclear subs:
The Beijing Pirated Dvds,
Chairman Mao Sweatshop Child Labor,
and Glorious October Revolution Contaminated Medicine.
:smack:
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From what I can tell, the PLA Navy names submarines by number, and surface combatants with city names.
http://www.sinodefence.com/navy/surface/luda051.asp
It doesn’t strike me as odd at all that subs have numbers. From my time in China, it is perfectly common for things to be named by number (eg, Number 4 Middle School, Building 12, etc) whereas it is less common here.
Remember, Germany never named their submarines, nor did the Japanese. Even the US didn’t always give names to submarines at first.
You may wish to consult the new General Questions Rules sticky:
On a related note, when the British Army introduced tanks in WW1 I’ve heard that the original intent was to name them (prefixed with HMLS, for His Majesty’s Land Ship), but the idea was dropped when it was realised how many tanks would be needed.
Is that because they are boats and not ships? It was “PT-109”, not the USS Clambake. 
Well, not quite. PTs were not given names, nor were a variety of other smaller ships. The US named some early submarines but gave others numbers. The “S” boats prior to WWII were all numbered.
Then the US introduced the so-called “fleet” submarine and started naming each one. They still called them boats (US Navy submariners still call them “boats” AFAIK) but they had names. That must have been difficult; as I remember the US built nearly 250 submarines in WWII.
The first naming convention the US Navy used was sea animals. I’m not gonna dig through all my references, but here’s a smattering of notable vessels from that era:
[ul]
[li]Tautog: (dunno what kind of fish that is): highest tonnage sunk of any sub in WWII[/li][li]Nautilus: (WWII diesel version) fired a torpedo at an aircraft carrier at Midway.[/li][li]Growler: her skipper won a posthumous Medal of Honor for ordering his crew to dive while he was stuck, injured on the outside bridge.[/li][li]Nautilus: (Nuke version) first ship to visit the North Pole; first “atomic” sub[/li][/ul]
Somewhere along the line, the Navy shifted gears on sub naming. The first ballistic missile subs were named after famous Americans (George Washington, Patrick Henry). Soon afterwards, the Navy recognized the importance of both attack and missile subs by re-using the old battleship/cruiser naming standard: missile subs got states (Ohio) and attack subs got state capitals/important cities (Chicago).