In reading the history of WWII, I was struck by how starnge some of the names that the Royal navy chose for its ships:, HMS HOTSPUR, and other interesting names,such as HMS VAMPIRE (destroyer-sunk in the batlle of the Java sea), HMS AMETHYST,etc.
The US Navy had a similar practice-in WWII, submarines were named for fish-I liked “USS CROAKER”-the name seems quite approptiate.
Why do we give warships such boring names today?
I can’t find a cite right now, but I seem to recall reading that when the Navy was trying to get funding for the Los Angles Class attack subs the reason for going from fish names to city names was that fish didn’t approve funding measures, but congressmen did.
[hijack]In the Tom Clancy book Red Storm Rising, the USS Ruben James (IIRC) meets up with the HMS Battleaxe. The Battleaxe messages the Ruben James and asks what a Ruben James is. The Captain of the Ruben James replies that at least the US didn’t name their warships after their mothers-in-law. 
[/hijack]
The USS REuben James (DD 245) was the first US Navy ship to be lost to hostile action in WWII.
http://yorkship.home.comcast.net/~yorkship/HTML/Yorkships.htm
and there have been at least 3 RN Battleaxe ships
Boring persons: http://www.nn.northropgrumman.com/bush/
Boring places: http://hamptonroads.com/node/254801
= Newest sub to be commissioned in Wilmington, NC, next month,
within sight of the WWII battleship of the same name:
The US Navy went from 790 active vessels in 1941 to 6,781 vessels in 1945. With that type of expansion, you need to be more creative with naming.
I am finding 337 active vessels in 2001. You can be a lot pickier with names when you have less than 5% the number of vessels to be christened.
I don’t have British fleet numbers as handy, but I can assure you a similar ratio holds.
(Added: If Wiki can be trusted, Her Majesty’s Navy has 81 active vessels as of 2007.)
From the House of Commons Hansard written answers of Nov. 2003:
Wiki’s RN Ship Names index is a treasure trove of marvelously flavourful names. Some of my particular favourites are: Revenge, Inflexible, Warspite, and Arrogant.
“Hotspur” is a reference to Sir Henry Percy.
Hijacking the hijack. In the book Sand Pebbles, which was about an American gunboat in China named San Pablo, the crew poked fun at a British gunboat named Woodcock, calling it “Timberdick.” The crew of the latter wracked their brains but couldn’t come up with anything worse than “Simple Apple.” The Sand Pebbles magnaminously said they would consider those fighting words and a horrid slur should they hear them uttered in their presence.
Certainly being in charge of ship-naming must be the best job in any navy. The Royal Navy simply has no system. Few new names are added when so many historic names are available.
The US Navy once had a system (from 1780-something)
First-class ships after the States
Second-class ships after main cities
Third-class ships after major rivers
Even as late as WWII, the USN tried to have a system. But if escort carriers were named after battles, and fleet carriers named after (whatever), the system broke down when they tried to fit a million grand old names on several hundred remaining hulls.
Add in a healthy amount of boot-licking to further confuse things. (The USS Scoop Jackson? What were they thinking?)
So we got a mess. Nothing wrong with that, but it is not so orderly.
And the Captain of the first HMS Hotspur was one Josceline Percy of the same family (more or less – the Percy family history is a bit… complicated).
Alnwick Castle, home of the Percy family, still displays two bronze Portuguese cannons that Josceline captured from the French at the battle of Vimiero in 1808.
There was only one USA battleship never named after a state- it was- the Kearsage. UK vessels were often named after what sort they were - as in Flower class were named after a flower.
In earlier days the First Lord would submit names for approval to the monarch. Churchill submitted the name Pitt (after a Prime Minister) to George V. George was aware of the slang that the sailors would call the vessel and vetoed it. Churchill believed such a thought was below the Royal mind.
Churchill also nominated “Oliver Cromwell” which was also knocked back as he had cut the head off a few ancestors.
Looking over the lists of US Navy names…USS Prinz Eugen was a pretty unique one 
.
After that, freak name wise, we’ve got (or had, in most cases), the USS…
A-1 (No kidding—according to the article, that was the name)
Alarcity
Alaskan (Not “Alaska”)
American Legion
Arabia
Anchor
Brandywine
Brittania
Cactus
Caliph
Cockatoo
Coeur de Lion
Cowpens
Cromwell
Cyclops
England
Fair American
Fairy
Flicker
Foam
Grayfag
Gurkha
Gypsum Queen
Hunchback
Human
Ice Boat
Inch
Industry
Iron Age
King
Kraken
Krishna
Las Vegas Victory
Moosbrugger
Moose
Mount Olympus
Nero
Nucleus
Ostrich
Ostfriesland (Under new management)
Queen of France
Stromboli
Stump
Suncock
Terror
Tickler
Pyro
Shangri-La
Taney
Wahoo
Water Witch
West Mahomet
Whippoowill
Wolverine (an aircraft carrier, no less)
War Hawk
War Bug
Winston Churchill
Zebra
Zeppelin
Zouave
(And yes, I know the deep, symbolic, and dutifully appropriate backstory behind some of these names. And to be fair, some of the names were very old, and/or attached to somewhat “less glamorous” ships. But I am not always a fair man.)
Yes, but the present system is really no system at all. Look at the AKRs. They take the names of stars, capes (the kind where land projects into the sea) and “various other names.” The most famous of these is the USNS Bob (I’m a supply ship) Hope.
Really no system at all.
Thanks for the excellent reference-anyone know why a warship would be named after a fictional, blood-drinking monster??
“V” class. V and W-class destroyer - Wikipedia
Seems like they had to come up with names for 28 destroyers, all of which had to start with the letter “v”.
The first HMS Vampire, was a V-class destroyer, it became HMAS Vampire when it was transferred to the RAN from the RN.
The initial 5 V-class destroyers where: Valhalla, Valkyrie, Valentine, Valorous and Vampire. Can you see a pattern? 
ETA: D’oh mlees beat me!
'Cause it’s scary?
Consider the British Flower-class corvettes from WW2, which bore such laughably unmacho names as HMS Azalea, Begonia, Buttercup, Candytuft, Cowslip, Dahlia, Heliotrope, Honeysuckle, Nasturtium, Petunia, Primrose, Snowflake, Tulip, and Verbena. It’s like something out of Gilbert & Sullivan. How could a proud, salty Jack Tar even hold his head up when he had to tell people ahore the name of his ship?
Naming conventions really have broken down in the U.S. Navy, often due to political considerations. It’s ridiculous that we have supercarriers named after late members of Congress whom most people have never heard of, like Carl Vinson and John C. Stennis, along with genuine greats like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
On the other hand, the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable, of which I’m a member, has been trying for several years (without success) to persuade the Navy to name a sub of the USS Virginia class after the famed Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, which fought the original CSS Virginia to a draw in 1862. The Monitor is one of the most famous ships in U.S. history, but there hasn’t been a ship of that name in the fleet since an assault transport decommissioned not long after WW2. But we’ve got a Bob Hope. :rolleyes:
I’m willing to bet that once a couple of jokers had their teeth knocked out, no one else made fun of Flower-class sailors.
Hmm. Monitor is also a word for a type of ship now, too. (Just like “Dreadnought” came to be a word that defines a whole warship type.) That may seem to be a check mark against the use of the name.
What is also not done much is the American-Indian word/names that never saw repeats, like the USS Winnebago (sic), Chickasaw, and Sebago.
Are you implying that, as a ship name, Vampire sucks?
Sailboat