Ship Naming Convention

[Badger]

Those of you who name your ships, what convention do you use? Popular culture? People you know or celebs? In game lore? Perhaps the shape or a characteristic of the ship model? Something else..?

My first ship in any game is always Heart of Gold, but after that I must admit I jump around with the naming convention. I've just renamed a ship actually. (Is that supposed to be bad luck?) I flown a few light years in my DBX. But every time I walked up to it, I couldn't help but think that it didn't really feel like a Starburst Wanderer. So now it's the Star Toad and everybody is happier for it. :)

Badger

[Agony_Aunt]

Mine are named in reference to the KLF

https://inara.cz/elite/cmdr-fleet/1134/

Our squadron and faction are the Justified Ancients of Mumu

<-- I have an ice cream van for my avatar

[HamakiBCN2]

Mine is Looney Tunes characters. For each ship i choose a particular character based on physical similarity and/or use.

For example, My transport Python is the Daffy Duck, but my AX Krait Mk2 is called Duck Dodgers. I have another AX, a Challenger, called Marvin the Martian. My explorer ASPX is called the Cecil Turtle. And so on.

Edit, i forgot about my massive, bright yellow mining Anaconda...i'll let you guess that one ;)

My carrier, on the other hand, is named after one of the co-creators of the Looney Tunes cartoon.

[Jeebs]

I don't know that I really have a naming convention, other than trying to find a name that fits the ship's purpose somewhat. Makes it a little easier to find them when I'm scrolling through the list.

I tend to give my combat ships names that you'd expect on 20th century/modern day naval battle ships, for example. Otherwise I just try to find a name that fits. Sometimes a ship goes unnamed until the right name comes along.

My DBX didn't get named for years. I was showing the game to a friend, forgot to throttle down when I jumped and crashed into the star's EZ because we were talking. I told him I call that "the Icarus manoeuvre" and subsequently named my faithful DBX Icarus, in honour of all the times I crashed into a star with it as a noob.

Similarly, my AspX is called Stargazer because you come out of jumps facing the star and the time I spend scooping fuel with it on long trips. My Anaconda, which I use as a heavily armed freighter, is named Hermes after the god of commerce. To give you a small sample.

I also have a Dolphin set up for sightseeing tours that I named "The Short Bus" because passengers are silly... IYKYK. Plus, if transporting players in a passenger cabin instead of the cockpit ever becomes a thing, that's the ship name I'd want.

[EJR]

I use Latin words and terms, or anything related to what they do ie mining, combat, etc. For example, my Sidewinder (The one you get for free for just playing the game) I named "Aeternus," which means eternal/immortal in Latin. My Vulture is just called "Dagger" since it is a combat ship, and my Krait is named "Vindicta" - "vengeance" in Latin. If I move on to an Anaconda or some other combat/multipurpose ship I may use "Invicta."

[DragonIV]

I miss Insane Ship Names...most of mine were named using that.
Since then, I've had to get creative.

Insane: exporation AspEx: The Much Drastic Maths
T9 trader: The Proper Dark Dublin
Cutter trader: Irregular Catering
Rescue Anaconda: The Curator of Fault
Vulture: Bitter Crossed Nerve

My names:
T10: Don't Call Me Fat
Cutter miner: Minter
DBX: Jolly Rancher
Python miner: DigDug
Corvette: Lingenfelter

Yeah, I miss Insane Ship Names.

[DragonIV]

And my carrier is named after my favorite hound doggo who passed away a few years ago: Lexie's Winnebago

[atom heart]

Mine are named after the aircraft that my dad flew in the RAF during his 35 year career and I have tried to keep the categories relevant to the type.

E.g.

Asp Explorer - Shackleton
Anaconda - Vulcan
Passenger Python - Britannia

and so on...

[dave46563]

My main exploration ship (DBX) is named Midnight Solstice.

Out of the rest, some of my ships are named after Royal Navy ships from the Napoleonic Wars. Others are named after stars (Asterope, Polaris etc).

EDIT: My daughter actually named my DBX for me. She was watching me play the game, and she just came up with that. Her mum complains that I can be up until midnight playing the game, and she just added solstice lol.

[DYSEQTA]

My ship names are whatever I want them to be. However, they are all either two words or two syllables. The reason for that is that I have station hailing set to use the first three letters of my ship ID in audio settings.

My ship IDs are all the first letter of my CMDR family name followed by a dash and then the first letter of each word in the ship name or the first letter of each syllable. So for instance my CMDR's name is "Minkahlyn Lee" and my main ship is "Fear Itself" so the ship ID is "L-FI" and so stations hail me as "Lima Foxtrot Indigo" when flying this ship.

[[PC] CMDR 501 General Venator]

My combat ships from Core Dynamics have all the FNS prefix, the name is then choosen mostly from other games i love. Anno 2070 for example holds the most names of my fleet.
FNS Strindberg, FNS Tycoon etc.
My science vette is (Federal Science Vessel) FSV Nauvis, nauvis is the primary surface in Factorio, another game i love

[ждун]

Use ChatGPT https://chat.openai.com/
and ask to suggest you some scy-fy space ship names.
this is what it gave me:

1. Hyperion's Destiny
2. Nebula Voyager
3. Quantum Seraphim
4. Stellar Phoenix
5. Interstellar Nova
6. Astral Horizon
7. Celestial Odyssey
8. Galactic Eclipse
9. Orion's Legacy
10. Cosmo Guardian
11. Starlight Sovereign
12. Infinity Wanderer
13. Cosmos Explorer
14. Solaris Sentinel
15. Titan's Resolve
16. Nebula Nomad
17. Omega Ascendant
18. Aurora Borealis
19. Andromeda Ascension
20. Nova Vanguard

[funkynutz]

Butchered Latin for most of the ships on my main account. Apart from 2, named after an old friend/wingmate and his alter ego.

Daft sounding descriptive names for my alt account. Like the "RockCrusher" (mining conda), the "FinancialSupport" (trade cutter), Grasshopper (DBX) etc...

[0Samuel]

You guys name your ships?

...I'll be honest, I'm not even sure where the menu item for that is at this point. Is it in... livery? Probably livery, right? Not advanced maintenance, surely. Do names need to be repaired, from time to time?

Maybe I'd get more attached if I got blown up less frequently. As it stands, though, is it really the same ship 30 rebuys later? Am I going to add a tick mark each time? It seems a little tedious, really.

[SomethingCoolBro]

I've been thinking about this and came up with the following names for my future ships - still new to the game so don't have many ships yet.

I Think, Therefore I Scan
Occam’s Blunt Razor
Schrodinger's Other Cat
Beyond Good and Data

People will probably recognise I like exploration, philosophy and Iain M. Banks novels.

[JakXLT]

Birds. My explorer ships are all rainforest birds, combat ships named for various raptors, cargo ships named for meat birds, notably my T9 'Cornish Roc', named for the fattest, dumbest and ugliest bird on the planet.