In US ships I’ve seen many naming conventions used. Though contrary to what you suggest probably more likely to be named for a place then a person. However, many other countries name ships for people as well. At least I’ve seen Russian and Brits do it.
About naming after people in the US though:
In small shipping companies, especially tugboats, it’s usually the name of a family member: Ex: Margaret Moran, Brendan Turecamo,
Next are ships named for a benefactor, or someone important in securing the funding or making sure the project gets completed. Ex: USTS Kennedy, USS Jeannette(formerly HMS Pandora)
Finally, ships of the same class or line all named after a group of people in memoriam. Ex: APL’s president named ships of the '40-70s, and Liberty Ships such as the SS JOHN W. BROWN and the SS JEREMIAH O’BRIEN
[QUOTE=Lee Shore;193974]There was a floating honey wagon in a New England marina I pulled into once. It was appropriately named the “Repulsive”.[/QUOTE]
In the 1990s while the sewage plant was under construction in Boston, there were sewage barges named “Number 1” and “Number 2.”
On their delivery trip from New Orleans under tow by Reinauer, the bows fell off both barges near Fort Pierce, Florida, The nasty litigation that followed is one on the main reasons I no longer practice law.
[QUOTE=jdcavo;193976]In the 1990s while the Nut Island sewage plant was under construction in Boston, there were sewage barges named “Number 1” and “Number 2.”
On their delivery trip from New Orleans under tow by Reinauer, the bows fell off both barges near Fort Pierce, Florida, The nasty litigation that followed is one on the main reasons I no longer practice law.[/QUOTE]
When the earth was young and everything was new, everyone named their icebreaker “Icebreaker” in their own native language (Isbryderen, Eisbrecher, Murtaja, Ledokol…).
The ‘name it for a family member’ convention indicates that that person, personally gets a share of the profits from their namesake. Or that’s what the Chouesties told me.
That’s interesting. I have noticed that some fleets nickname, or shorten the proper names of their ships. When I was on a Chouest ship, for example, we usually only called her by her first name, and, likewise, the other ships in that fleet were called by their first names. In Teekay, we usually use the full name of the ship. There is also some unavoidable corporate backronym for ‘Spirit,’ which lists the inspirational/aspirational values.
Ship’s names often seem to whimsical. Thirty some years ago Hornbeck then named their boats after race horses. I don’t know if that continues now. Waterman, out of Mobile AL, named their ships after Confedrates i.e. the Jeff Davis, Stonewall Jackson, etc. or southern signers of the Declaration of Independence: George Wythe, Thomas Lynch. I don’t think anyone from north of the Mason Dixon line was ever memorialized on the bow of a Waterman ship. I remember in the mid seventies a British flag company that used to trade in West Africa whose ships were all named after flowers: the Begonia, Pansy etc.! A favorite of mine was a tanker I saw in the in the anchorage in the lagoon in Curacao: the Auga Caliente, Spainish for Hot Water!
