Names of Ships

Perpetual Man

Perpetual Man

Tim James
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Okay, hopefully something that will spark a bit of talk, in a fun manner as we don't always need depth!

It is something that seems to go without saying that Space Craft have names.

The most famous probably being The Enterprise, but right across the genre ships have names, from Millennium Falcons, through to the impossible wonderful and creative names used by the late Iain M Banks.

Obviously it's something that has been extrapolated from real life, boats have names, and have done for as long as can be remembered.

But it is not something that is applied to everything, cars don't have, in most cases individual names, motorhomes do, as do caravans and trains and...

Well, it just seems to be a manner of identifying things, give 'em a name.

Do you think it is something that has to be done, or could you write something set in a naturally occurring, but separate to our own society, where names are not used on ships?
 
I think it would be natural to name something where a large group of people would be expected to need to identify or refer to it. The only real alternative would be a serial or registration number, but since the invention of ships would probably pre-date the kind of administration that would organise registers of ships, I think naming as a convention would exist in any given world, though you might have an ultra-rationalist society that would then swap to serial numbers etc.
 
I think it's totally okay to not name ships. As long as there's some kind of cohesive classification. And omg. This is so hard to do. In my WIP, I have a LOT of ships. NONE of them have names. But they have types and sizes and things like that. Boats and ships are the main form of transportation so they're treated like cars.

Ironically, I do name my own cars and vehicles. But that's cuz I'm a weirdo and will anthropomorphize anything.
 
Hell even my guitars are named...

However I'm thinking, although I may be wrong, that there aren't any named ships in the Iliad - just 'X black ships from Greek state Y' (although that might be deemed a name of sorts)
 
Ship names can be evocative in their own right. When I was a kid, it was a long time before I knew what millennium meant, and I certainly didn't see falcon in the context of MF as as bird. Instead something metallic and shippy. Moya, for example also conjures up Mother Earth and a pastoral, matriarchal environment which is exactly what she was.

I've not named anything. Not even my fish. My ex used to call my pike 'Mikey' and it drove me spare.

pH
 
In terms of names, there is a lovely spin-off book from Star Trek - possibly one of the ones by Diane Duane - which has in the background that is dropped into the story, how the Romulans came about as a split off from the Vulcans - and how they went back to the roots of the Vulcan language and then came back forward from that to create new words. Also, starting on the message boards of the Romulans to be, was the comment "things notice" and they developed culture around that and also on the implications of names. So calling a ship "The Enterprise" the modern Romulans immediately asked "which enterprise" to which came the reply "well, enterprise in general" and the Romulan character said "no wonder she is always finding trouble".
 
I've never named any vehicle - I did buy a car many years ago which had my initials on the number plate (by accident).

We had boats as a kid and we had names for them, and I'm sure we had a name for one of our cars.

The camper van has a name, Ruby but it had it when we bought it and the boys did not want to change it!
 
I think naming a ship can be very important. If the ship shows up more than once in your story and has any minimally-recurring role, a name would help, and not only to make mentions of it feel more organic. Naming things makes it easier to establish an emotional connection to them and to connect the thing to its story so far (be it positive--or negative, if the ship is the villain's, etc. It's easier to recall where the Enterprise has been, more so than a nameless ship, for example). By naming it, the ship stops being a mere prop, and can become something else to the MC--the name of the ship many times ends up practically representing the crew inside (when you talk about the Enterprise, you're really referring to its crew, but they end up being interchangeable and the emotional connection can be as strong for one as for the other). And if the MC treats the ship as another character, the reader ends up being invested more in it as well. There's a reason why humans can get emotionally attached to inert objects. It would be a sin, as a writer, not to take advantage of this in order to emotionally invest the reader in the story more. I don't think there's much of a downside to naming ships. At the very least the recurring ones.

If the Enterprise or the Milleniun Falcon were to be destroyed during the story, it could be a tear-jerking shock, as they are symbols, not objects. To the MC, and to the reader by extension, they can symbolise freedom, riches, bravery, love, sacrifice, shelter, obsession, duty, etc. The ship can become an extra character. Picture the Millenium Falcon being named Cargo Freighter 67SD and a lot of its epic feel dissipates. Not having a name distances the object from the reader. If the ships don't play a relevant part in the story, names are useless, but otherwise, I would almost always name them.
 
Not all boats have names, Uboats only had numbers, but I bet to their crews that number meant as much as any name.
 
Now, try thinking beyond our own society and development - something completely alien, where evolution, science has taken a totally different path but ended up with a space faring civilisation - do you think they would still feel the need to name ships?
 
Perpetual Man said:
something completely alien, where evolution, science has taken a totally different path but ended up with a space faring civilisation
Click to expand...
I was just imagining our cats as a spare-faring civilisation. I'm sure they would name things because they definitely have a concept of ownership, from the over-lapping cheek-marking of door-frames, to the on-going squabble over who gets to sleep on the prime cushion in front of the washing machine. Maybe you can have a completely alien civilisation with enough cooperation to build space-ships and not have a concept of ownership, and maybe I can't imagine them not having that because I can get away from my own sense of ownership of things, but my head keeps coming back to a basic that's mine and I call it xxxx, and I call it xxxx to make it easier to tell you it's mine.

Except for cars, which we never gave names. Or not obvious names - but then our approaching to naming things doesn't tend towards calling a car Fred or whatever.

Our current vehicle is The Van. It's a good enough name - we've only got the one. The previous one (which is currently out to grass, literally, and the sheep have been using it to scratch their shoulders on) is called The Volvo. The sheep, on the other hand, have names, because it makes it so much easier to have a conversation along the lines of Cilla is lying on her side again, come and help me get her on her feet. Much easier than that elderly black sheep with the balance problem...

Vladd67 said:
Not all boats have names, Uboats only had numbers, but I bet to their crews that number meant as much as any name.
Click to expand...

We still have two sheep who are known by their numbers 37 and 38. OK, there's umpteen digits on the ear tag, but they're just known as 37 and 38. So when the Biskitetta says 38 didn't turn up for feed today I know just which woolly trouble-maker she's talking about.
 
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