Favorite canon Starfleet ship names?
- Thread starter kitsune
- Start date
because that's the way his tribe liked to name themselves.
I think my favorite has to be Bellerophon. I also like Defiant, Prometheus, Titan, and Equinox.
No, but we're not in a North American town, either, but there are still ships with names like the the USS Saratoga or the USS Yorktown. And we're not in Japan, but there are still ships like the USS Okinawa. Why shouldn't there be a ship named the USS Congo -- named after a country with millions of citizens?
Uh, folks, Kongo is a Japanese name - she was a Japanese battleship in WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Kongō
The name apparently means "Indestructable."
Excelsior
Prometheus
Intrepid
Enterprise
Equinox
Daedalus
Prometheus
Intrepid
Enterprise
Equinox
Daedalus
I'm aware -- that's why I changed the spelling to "Congo." But the idea that the Congo doesn't deserve a starship name when it's the name of a major river with two countries that take their names from it just because it's a different ecology than what we have in North America seemed wrong to me.
BTW, "Kongo" can also refer to a Bantu ethnic group, also known as the Bakongo, that inhabits the area of the Congo River.
Why does no one listen to me:
I said it already.
IIRC, 'TMoST' reprints the memos where production discussed the names of the other Starship class ships, and D.C. Fontana suggested Kongo (among several others that were not used on screen including Ari and Krieger) to suggest a more international flair...
... which makes this an even more valid interpretation of the name, even if I'm reasonably sure she referenced the Japanese battleship.
Enterprise, Yorktown, Lexington, Hood, Excalibur, Constitution, Constellation, Excelsior, Bonaventure...
Named for Admiral David Farragut, the USN's first Rear, Vice and Full Admiral.
Named for Admiral David Farragut, the USN's first Rear, Vice and Full Admiral.
She was a piece of garbage too, if I remember my War in the Pacific games right. Slow and, as she was a Japanese ship, borderline useless as an anti-aircraft platform.
The CVs--the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku--on the other hand... they were magnificent vessels.
I think what we have to remember is that United Starfleet ships aren't named after the battles or the people or, ordinarily, the concept, but the ships themselves. Yorktown isn't named after the town or the battle, she's named after the USS Yorktown CV-5, who in turn was probably named after earlier ships. It's questionable, of course, whether this is an "evolved" naming practice, but humans have a keen sense of history.
Now, I do wonder if they considered the implications of naming ships after ones employed by atrocity-happy imperialists, like the Yamato. Is it just the shrift given the IJN? I don't think we've seen names from the Kriegsmarine show up in Trek yet--no USS Graf Zeppelin or Tirpitz or Bismarck. Are Nazi ship names automatically bad? If so, why just them, and not the Japanese? Are Italian ship names guilty by association, too? I have seen no USS Vittorio Veneto.
Then again, there's no United Starfleet Ship Ronald Reagan either.
Of course this all begs the question why we almost never see alien names after the USS. I think the answer is simple: most of the other founding species have little historical experience in building ships, because most of other founding species do not have navigable oceans. Vulcan is either completely a desert or has purple oceans filled with anoxic, sulfur-metabolizing bacteria. Andor is a moon around a gas giant and distant from its star--during the times the ocean isn't frozen, tidal forces probably make every day a tsunami. Not too many ships are plying either of those seas.
Then again, there's no United Starfleet Ship Ronald Reagan either.
Ronald D. Moore once posted on an AOL board during the run of DS9 that there is a Federation starship Ronald Reagan. It's a garbage scow whose port nacelle is down, so it keeps veering to the right.
ltcmmanderdata
Lieutenant Commander
enterprise constellation defiant valiant farragut
Then again, there's no United Starfleet Ship Ronald Reagan either.
Ronald D. Moore once posted on an AOL board during the run of DS9 that there is a Federation starship Ronald Reagan. It's a garbage scow whose port nacelle is down, so it keeps veering to the right.
Used to run money and arms to the Maquis, no doubt.Does the Clinton-class have nacelles bent in the middle?
