Do you know what really grinds my gears about Star Trek? Ship names! They follow no logical pattern and classes seem to have no naming conventions. Infact, Starfleet seems to lack naming conventions in general!

Why couldn't ship names follow a convention for class? In the Royal Navy we use that system and it provides both uniformity, convention and tradition. All Type 45 Daring Class Destroyers have names that start with D (Daring, Dauntless, Dragon etc.). All Type 23 Duke Class Frigates are named after famous British Dukes (Grafton, Monmouth, Montrose, St. Albans, Iron Duke etc.)

So why couldn't all Defiant Class ships start with a D? Defiant, Daring, Dauntless, Diamond? Rather than Defiant, Valiant (a V?), San Paulo (whats that, a city?!)!?!?

Why couldn't Galaxy Class ships be named after Galaxies? Sagitarius, Ursa, Andromeda, Pegasus, Aquarius? Or be named after famous Starfleet ships? Enterprise, Reliant? Or famous Earth aircraft carriers from history? Enterprise, Invincible, Ark Royal, Illustrious? Rather then Yamaoto (famous Japanese Officer), Trinculo (what or who?), Magellan (Portuguese explorer!?), Venture (Canadian Naval Training Centre?).

Just saying, I would offer more validation to Starfleet...rather then it being quite random!

This is just a bit of fun btw, I don't want same fan boys flaming me! I love me some Trek, just think ship naming is quiiiiite random sometimes

Are you talking about just in the game or in the ST universe in general?

Probably in general....


I was always curious about the naming convention in Trek...but I'd always chalked it up to whatever the writers felt like using at that time is what stuck.

Technically it's Sao Paulo (the a in Sao has a funny little wavy line over it...apparently not available in ASCII...hehe) which is a city in Brazil...if I *THINK* it's Portuguese for Sant Paul.... hehee

In general!

And another thing, Interpid Class Ships. Voyager, Intrepid, Bellerophon!? Surely Centaur ships would have worked better with Bellerophon (and other myth and legend names?)

That's why I prefer to name my ship myself.

USS Free Candy is on the scene!

Go nuts
It may be a fansite but it should cover pretty much all the names. It even shows which class the ship belongs to.

I'm quite sure to this, but if I remember correctly the Constitutions in TOS, for the most part, shared their names with WWII aircraft carriers- Exeter, Excalibur, Enterprise, Intrepid, Constellation, and so on. Not quite as sure for TNG and onward. I know there were several ships of different classes that had names after Earth cities and rivers, and I'm willing to place a bet that Voyager was probably taken from the Voyager Program. In terms of ENT, the only two I'm certain of are Enterprise and Columbia. I think Memory-Alpha lists this as naming the NX-Class ships after the Space Shuttles, canonly, but in reality, Columbia was used because of the Columbia Disaster in 2003.

I'm not entirely sure if this is accurate, but like what was said, ship names can be very random at the best of times.

In this case, I'll stick with state names, alternate spellings of current ship names, and the names of sailing ships.

Are the windows blacked out or removed?

If I recall..that's correct. But they were planning on using the shuttle names anyway...It was either Challenger or Atlantis...possibly even Endeavor that was to be used until the tragic loss of NASA's oldest shuttle and her crew.

My two cents about kids naming ships USS ChunkyMunky and garbage like that. There is no standard, because there is no rule of law backing it up. Every Officer has a boss, and that boss has another boss. A ship name is a BIG DEAL in RL Navy. There is no way a Captain would name his or her ship something that would bring discredit to their particular Navy, regardless of country. In Starfleet, you would probably face some sort of Court Martial proceedings and your ship would be taken away from you (at the least). Here...anarchy. No rule of law. No enforcement. No UCMJ.

Which really, is fine. I am not advocating any type of set of rules or senior Officer watchdogs. I get enough of that in RL. Hell, a lot of "higher rank" here are kids anyway. But it's just a mess, and attempting to grognard in here is pointless. My advice is find a role playing fleet and stick to that world, because the thirteen year old Admiral in the USS L33tf4rtz doesn't give a fig about the RL Navy, Starfleet regulation, or grumpy old men (speaking). He/she just wants pew pew pew and pwn n00bs, which is the source of the "where is Sulu" crap. Looking for a semblance of order here is like playing chess on the moon.

Rant concluded. Yes, it's probably way off topic. I apologize.