After a battle someone has to call it something for the history books. I suppose when the battle is at a well-defined location like Stalingrad, the name comes naturally. But what about say, fleet action on the open sea? In unit war diaries, I guess they call it something like “Action on June 14th” or some such. Not a problem for a single unit source, but not really specific enough for overall history. Is there some kind of convention or informal rules about how the big, important battles are named?
The sea battles, Battle of Midway and Battle of Coral Sea, from WWII are named after geographical areas. The were pretty big.
I imagine that in most cases, the general public has settled on names before enough time passes for the historians to even get involved. If you want to give any one entity credit for the naming, it’d probably be the newspapers (who write “the first rough draft of history”).
It’s also not uncommon for battles to have multiple names. In the US Civil War the Southern newspapers often described battles based on city names while Northern newspapers would base it on the nearest river or other geographical feature.
So you have Antietam and Sharpsburg, or Bull Run and Manassas.
The battle of Waterloo was famously named after the place where Wellington sent his dispatch from after defeating Napoleon. The battle was actually some 2 kilometres away at Quatre Bras.
The French called it the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean, while the Prussians referred to it as La Belle Alliance after a nearby inn.
Trafalgar, where Nelson won his final victory was named after the nearby cape.
History decides. Winning the battle helps.
What the Germans called the Battle of the Skagerrak in WWI is now known by how the British named it - the Battle of Jutland.
Never mind
I give you the Glorious First of June, in which a Royal Navy fleet under Admiral Howe sank 1 French ship of the line and captured 6 more while losing no vessels himself.
As others have already noted, there’s no hard and fast rule for the naming of naval actions and they often have different names by the opposing sides. The Guadalcanal campaign saw seven naval battles fought, five surface actions and two carrier battles. From first to last, they are named as follows:
- Battle of Savo Island - named for the island at the entrance to the Sound off the north of Guadalcanal, known forever afterwards as Ironbottom Sound.
The Battle of Savo Island , also known as the First Battle of Savo Island and, in Japanese sources, as the First Battle of the Solomon Sea (第一次ソロモン海戦, Dai-ichi-ji Soromon Kaisen), and colloquially among Allied Guadalcanal veterans as the Battle of the Five Sitting Ducks
- Battle of the Eastern Solomons - the first carrier battle named after the rough geographic area.
The naval Battle of the Eastern Solomons (also known as the Battle of the Stewart Islands and, in Japanese sources, as the Second Battle of the Solomon Sea ) took place on 24–25 August 1942, and was the third carrier battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II and the second major engagement fought between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Guadalcanal campaign.
- Battle of Cape Esperance - second surface action, named after the nearby Cape on the Island of Guadalcanal.
The Battle of Cape Esperance , also known as the Second Battle of Savo Island and, in Japanese sources, as the Sea Battle of Savo Island (サボ島沖海戦)
- Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands - second carrier battle, named after the islands the US carriers were north of during the battle, the Santa Cruz Islands themselves being west of Guadalcanal.
The Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands , fought during 25–27 October 1942, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Santa Cruz or Third Battle of Solomon Sea , in Japan as the Battle of the South Pacific (Japanese: 南太平洋海戦 Minamitaiheiyō kaisen )
- The First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal - the third surface action, it got the name because it was the first part of two battles fought a few nights apart that proved decisive to the naval campaign.
The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal , sometimes referred to as the Third and Fourth Battles of Savo Island , the Battle of the Solomons , the Battle of Friday the 13th , or, in Japanese sources, the Third Battle of the Solomon Sea (第三次ソロモン海戦, Dai-san-ji Soromon Kaisen), took place from 12 to 15 November 1942, and was the decisive engagement in a series of naval battles between Allied (primarily American) and Imperial Japanese forces during the months-long Guadalcanal Campaign in the Solomon Islands during World War II. The action consisted of combined air and sea engagements over four days, most near Guadalcanal and all related to a Japanese effort to reinforce land forces on the island. The only two U.S. Navy admirals to be killed in a surface engagement in the war were lost in this battle.
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The Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal - fourth surface battle, the follow-up to the that occurred on the night of 14-15 November.
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Battle of Tassafaronga - fifth surface action, named after a point on the north shore of Guadalcanal.
The Battle of Tassafaronga , sometimes referred to as the Fourth Battle of Savo Island or, in Japanese sources, as the Battle of Lunga Point (ルンガ沖夜戦 - Lunga naval night battle), was a nighttime naval battle that took place on November 30, 1942
Notice that the alternate name of ‘Fourth Battle of Savo Island’ itself can either refer to what is commonly known in English as the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal or the Battle of Tassafaronga.
Often the Press does.
Somewhere I read that in the Medieval Era, the heralds from both sides would often get together the night before a battle and decide on a name for it. Also shared the names of the principal participants. Just making sure everyone was on the same page. Sounds way too civilized for today.
An opportunity for me to throw in that I grew up just a few miles from the Bavarian towns of Blindheim and Höchstädt, which gave their names to one of the big battles of the War of Spanish Succession. The English use the former name (anglicised to Blenheim), the French the latter, based on where the respective headquarters were located. Blenheim, in turn, was then used to name a lot of other entities throughout British history.
It seems like the winners do most of the naming, and that they’re typically named after some nearby geographical feature like a city, island, sea, etc… Or in the case of air battles, they’re named after the target in most cases.
Examples- Battle of Coral Sea, Battle of Midway, Battle of Normandy, Battle of San Jacinto, Battle of Culloden, Battle of Kursk, Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, Second Schweinfurt Raid, etc…
Occasionally, they get colloquial or non-geographic names - Glorious First of June, Battle of the Bulge, Seven Days Battles, D-Day.
The battle was south of there, but not at Quatre-Bras, which was the site of a different battle two days earlier. The battle was more or less near Mont St. Jean & La Belle Alliance.
You mean “bataille des Ardennes”, right? 
and sometimes they have several names: Austerlitz is often nicknamed battle of three emperors; Leipzig is battle of the nations…
To an English speaker, “the Battle of Ardennes” was in 1914.
Donald Sobol wrote mini mysteries for the detectives Encyclopedia Brown and Dr. Haledjian. IIRC, both characters had a story featuring a scam artist with a sword engraved from the “First Battle of Bull Run” which supposedly was presented to a Confederate officer a few days after the battle. Both detectives pointed out it should be engraved “Manassas” instead of Bull Run, and also the “First” was wrong since the second one hadn’t been fought yet.
Being a bit of a stuffy history type, I always refer to it as the Ardennes Offensive - that and the use of the phrase ‘battle of the bulge’ in so many crass weight loss commercials. Then again, there were two Ardennes Offensives in WWII, the one in 1940 and the one in 1944. But then there were also four Battles of Kharkov in WWII. And twelve Battles of Isonzo in WWI. You can normally tell by context which Ardennes Offensive or Battle of Kharkov is being referenced though, and the twelve battles of Isonzo are always neatly referred to by their number.
Isn’t the one in 1944 technically a counteroffensive?
Adding to this:
D-Day in military terms simply means Day Zero, the day of an invasion to simplify planning as the date gets changed more often than not. Thus, the day before the planned amphibious landing is D-1 and the day after is D+1, etc.
After D-Day became associated with the Normandy landings then the military started to use other letters. For example, L-Day was designated at landing day for the invasion of Okinawa.
In the modern world Operational code names also get drafted in as battle names.
For example “Market Garden”. Pedestal.