When You Run Out Of Names ...

[alex_greene]

When the names run out of your head, and you already have fifteen ships from the various fleets called Dortmunder, Steppenwulf, Sutherland, Illustrious, Indefatigable, Dauntless and Enterprise, where do you go to for further inspiration?

Some hilarious names I have come up with over the years have included:-

The Free Traders Iszap and Mendax;
The IISS Candiru;
A destroyer called the Jumentous;
A cruiser called the Meretrix.
Escorts called Impono, Decipio, Ieftin and Imbroglio (not on the same convoy duty, though)
The Søppel, the Stront, the Onnozel, the Mahtava, Hieno, Erinomainen and Salo.

What have you used?

 

[DFW]

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usn-name.htm

 

[dmccoy1693]

The d66 Compendium. It has over 200 ship names along with many more types of names inside. It is filled with awesome.

[/shameless plug]

 

[IanBruntlett]

(AD&D, Greyhawk, Horned Society Warship):-
Black Cloud On Your Horizon

(About to be used)
Unexpected Consequence

 

[FreeTrav]

I've used spam.

Seriously.

There was a period when spammers were sending out their garbage with subject lines consisting of two words, generally an adjective and a noun, or an adverb and a participle, or an adverb and an adjective. So, I would compile some of the better combinations into a list, and use them when I needed a ship name. Thus did I end up with the Free Trader Postprandial Perambulations, the Yacht Remarkably Indecent, and the SDB Militant Quaker.

 

[Dave Chase]

Phone book.
Random page opening and finger slamming to see what name the character will be.

Dave Chase

 

[mattman]

Culture ships. Always

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_%28The_Culture%29


My personal favs:
Prosthetic Conscience
Flexible Demeanour
Limiting Factor
Someone Else's Problem *
Ethics Gradient
Limivorous
Ultimate Ship The Second
Well I Was In The Neighbourhood*
Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints

 

[alex_greene]

These all sound so normal.

I actually enjoy the hilarity of inadvertent cultural clash, and the accidental use of a name in one language that happens to be an obscenity in another. The Candiru, for example, is a kind of parasitic fish that lives in the Amazon; "meretrix" is Latin for a female prostitute; and "mendax" is Latin for "liar."

Think of the ships named in Larry Niven's Ringworld and The Ringworld Engineers. Imagine a Terran ship called the Sykes landing on a Tenctonite world (Tenctonites being the race featured in the Nineties TV series Alien Nation); the locals would laugh out loud at the ship's name, since it sounds so much like their words for "cranium" and "excrement."

 

[E.D.Quibell]

and the famous twin sisters HMS Redundant and HMS Redundant

 

[DFW]

the locals would laugh out loud at the ship's name, since it sounds so much like their words for "cranium" and "excrement."

The HMS Poo-poo Head. 8)

 

[Vile]

Gun magazines or song titles. My favourite ship names were Bad Moon Rising, Eve of Destruction and Ruger Redhawk.

 

[TravellerArt]

I go to random page in Wikipedia for name creation (& inspiration of any sort).
A bit of lateral thinking can get some great results.

 

[Vile]

Oi! What have you done with Beech?!

 

[GamerDude]

my players know that, if I've been caught off guard for a name (or for some reason just plain forget), then it will be the "Minniahah". Well, at least until I can give it a proper name.

Otherwise I will use many of the things suggested here: Song titles, famous people, locations, movies, etc.

 

[IanBruntlett]

my players know that, if I've been caught off guard for a name (or for some reason just plain forget), then it will be the "Minniahah". Well, at least until I can give it a proper name.

Sometimes I ask my players to suggest suitable names themselves.

 

[saundby]

This thread on ship names.