How do they decide what names to give all the various naval vessels?
There are the conventions and rules, and then the Sec of the Navy picks.
This is obviously not a universal and complete answer, since it’s implicitly assumes the only ships being discussed are United States naval (governmental, not civilian) ships.
Other nations have other (similar) conventions, and yet other nations have significantly different practices. For instance, Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force names warships and auxiliaries after nature: animals, mountains, geographical features, weather phenomena, etc. This, and other elements of force culture, are a continuation of Imperial Japanese Navy practices.
ETA: I imagine this leads to the unusual circumstance that during joint exercises, US and Japanese ships work together, but their World War II namesakes were trying to sink each other. Awkward, perhaps. (Can’t find a concrete example, but ship naming is so repetitive and cyclic that it seems impossible to me for this to never to have happened.)
I can’t resist the highjacks!
List of USN ships assigned to Carrier Strike Group Five, home ported in Yokosuka, Japan: [url=Carrier Strike Group 5 - Wikipedia]
Two US ships are using the same namesake as their WW2/Pacific War counterparts: USS Barry (Okinawa campaign), USS Mustin (Battles of Santa Cruz, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, Okinawa).
Furthermore, two USN ships are named after USN personnel who served in the Pacific: USS John S. McCain, USS McCampbell.
Also, USS Antietam (CV-36) arrived in the Western Pacific theater in late August '45, a couple weeks too late to take part in the hostilities, and there is now a Ticonderoga-class cruiser with CSG-5.
Two of the carrier air squadrons present aboard the Reagan trace their squadron histories back to combat missions in the Pacific theater: VFA-115, VFA-195.
Here is a list of the JMSDF ships:
We’re all waiting anxiously for the USS Trumpy McTrump face.
Some ship classes have more unfortunate names than others.
Oh… dear. But then, the Brits also have/had a search aircraft named the Nimrod (which is a good name, as Nimrod was a mighty hunter, and even said to be gay at parties…)
I find the list of LIberty/Victory ship names to be amusing, as there were so many, built so fast, that they were practically named by the page of American Biography. There was even a Frank B. Gilbreth, which is how I stumbled on the list.
But yeah… I wonder how many former RN chaps are proud to tell the pub they served on the Gay Charioteer?
There was once the convention to name ammo ships after volcanoes … one good hit on the USS Mauna Kea and … well … maybe not a VEI-4 but something close … that always tickled me …
The Brits being the Brits, they also had a large class of destroyer escorts (small antisub vessels for convoy duty) during WWII, the flower class. The Compass Rose of the Nicholas Monsarrat novel The Cruel Sea was one of those. They also had such ships as the Pansy, The Begonia, The Buttercup, and many other such. Royal Navy enlisted men (Tars) wore a hat with the name of the ship on it. This must have been interesting to walk into a bar with a hat that says “Begonia” or “Pansy”.
Not to overly hijack, but in the early 1950s, Arthur C. Clarke wrote a SF story which started with a multinational space force consisting of three cruisers, spoofing naming conventions of three navies at once.
The USS “Duh Bronx”, the Russian “Glorious 5th of June formerly the Admiral Gorshobveski formerly the People of majestikstan” and the “H.M.S. Insufferable”
ICBW but during wartime, they didn’t have the names of their ships on their hats when in public and off duty. Such information would have been of use to the enemy.
Well, they were cheaper by the dozen…
Then there’s the (fictional) USS Bustard. There was a scene where the the skipper (James Whitmore) announced on the 1MC that any . . . accidental pronunciations or typos would not be tolerated.
That’s great. I laughed out loud at the Russian one.
They were great for cruising.
Then again, it worked pretty good for that boy named Sue. Legend has that he took care of himself pretty well in bars.
What is the proper ‘name’ of the ship, say the USS John Q Citizen?
Would a pedantic indexer file it under U, J or C?
Its done in a very official way, with a register, so the Navy can prove its a real navy ship, properly in the books, and not a privateer you are letting sail around disguised as a Navy ship.
That museum ship is kept on the register… I think so that the US Navy’s budget can be spent on maintenance. Not sure what it means if the Pentagon says "all Navy ships to be readied for war…do they have to say … “except the museum… its not going to war.”.
Sec of the Navy can be overruled by his superiors of course, however the superiors would not actually be naming it, they would be issuing an order telling Sec of the Navy to name it X … because the register is in the Sec of the Navy’s office.
I’d guess no more so than when US Navy ships are named after battles or figures from WWII in the Pacific (or for that matter ships named after Revolutionary War battles or figures operating with ships from the UK). Guess I can’t resist the hijack either; just from the list of currently commissioned ships of the US Navy I could find: Cape St. George,* Chung-Hoon*, Cole, Harry S. Truman, Iwo Jima, Leyte Gulf, Makin Island, Mitscher, Pearl Harbor, Philippine Sea, Roosevelt, The Sullivans, Vella Gulf. I very likely missed a few, and that’s only PTO related ships, so I excluded the Anzio for example and its only currently commissioned ships. Off the top of my head the lead ships now retired Spruance class destroyers and the Tarawa class amphibious assault ships were PTO related.