The origional warship *Bonne Homme Richard *was named after Franklin’s name de plume by John Paul Jones.
The literal translation of “Bonhomme Richard” is Good Man Richard, however
Ah, the tidbit I was missing.
In World War II they’d have looked at the ship though, for the name. I know of no tradition of naming ships after books, other than the Jones example.
Wrong.
There was never a revolution theme. As I pointed out, Antietam does not fit.
Battlecruisers were named for battles or famous ships, and this convention was adopted for carriers in WW II with a few exceptions.
Isn’t there a tradition that it’s bad luck to rename a ship? A superstition but not something you’d want to do unnecessarily to a naval crew during a war.
Yes, that superstition is known to exist amongst sailors. Whatever the case, the Navy still did it. But perhaps they didn’t in some case from objection by a crew for that reason, I don’t know.
There isn’t anything in that wiki article that disputes what I wrote. The first 7 carriers took there names from the canceled cruisers (which had a Revolution theme). Carriers built after that (like Antietam) took their names from…ANYTHING the Navy felt like naming them. Take away the names of cities (used for cruisers) and states (for battleships) you’re pretty much left with battles, famous ships, and people.
The ARTICLE says that Battlecruisers had a naming convention of Battles and Famous Ships. You say it was revolutionary war.
Despite the minor conflicts regarding facts in this thread, it really is more of a General Question than a Great Debate.
Off to GQ.
Despite being in an article called “Ship Naming Conventions” it isn’t stated that it was the convention to name them after battles and ships. It’s hardly conventional to choose two distinct themes for naming things within a class.
Regardless, whether the convention was the Revolution or battles and ships, the convention was not consistently applied to aircraft carriers in WWIi. After the initial seven which took their names from the proposed battlecruisers, new carriers were mostly named for carriers that had been sunk in 1942. After that, it’s a crapshoot of battles, old ship names, and famous Americans.
There is the USS SHANGRI-LA (CV-38) which is a place in the book Lost Horizon.
Heh—I once wrote a short story/fictional class history of a (never built in real life) class of light carriers, and I ended up naming the class after minor, semi-forgotten battles. (it seemed appropriate 
). So it ended up the Toulgas class of Sea Control Ships, with other members of the class including the Battery Wagner; Cape Gata; Vera Cruz, etc.
Now if you overlooked Trenton in your story, we’re gonna have to hang you out to dry. 
JK
Darn tootin’!
Back to the OP, I don’t I think any ship would likely be specifically named after the Battle of Trenton because it shares it’s name with a modern state capital worthy of a ship’s name whether it was the site of a battle or not. The Battle of Brooklyn was probably the largest battle of the Revolution, yet none of the USN ships named USS Brooklyn were named after the battle.
It’s entirely possible the residents of Trenton may have objected to losing their city’s cruiser. (I don’t mean ownership, I mean representation of cities)
While your point about the name is true, the Shangri-La is really a reference to the Doolittle Raid, and so follows the “name them after battles” criteria. As the wiki points out:
I had thought Roosevelt’s quip was in response to Japanese sputtering in the world press about where this mystical raid had come from, as Japan had every rock within land based bomber range well under its control at that time. Lost Horizon was well-known at the time, due to the popular book in 1933, and technically ambitious movie made four years later.
And turn down an upgrade to an aircraft carrier? The fools!
Well, it is Jersey.
The carrier would be named after the battle, of course, and DISTINCTLY not their town, as this thread aptly demonstrates.