More on Starship names

[James Wright]

I'm curious to know if 2 starships of the same class can have the same name at the same time if one name is French and the other English?
Examples, Guerriere(French for Warrior), Renommee(French for Renown).

James

 

[F. King Daniel]

I kinda doubt it, although a class where all ships are all different language versions of the same name would be kinda cool.

 

[Timo]

Heck, having two ships named after the same thing in English isn't that unlikely, either... Not quite the same thing, but Vickers never had any problem with naming its consecutive bombers Wellesley and Wellington, for the same guy. And plenty of classic heroic RN ship names are synonyms anyway, basically words shanghaied to English from different languages.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Markonian]

According to Bernd Schneider's website Ex Astris, Scientia, the USS Constantinople is an Istanbul-class starship.

 

[thribs]

In the Enterprise novels there was a Andorian ship that had the name Enterprise in Andorian. This was during the Federation era and so there is one more Enterprise to add to the list.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I've always felt that most of Starfleet's traditions were loosely based off the US & British navies and why the majority of ship names were in English rather than Spanish or Andorian (just as two examples). Since we do know that there are ship names that aren't English in origin, I don't see why there can't be two ships from the same design that have the same name but in different languages. In a way, it's not that different from ships in the same class that have similar-meaning names like Enterprise and Endeavour.

 

[Timo]

Or perhaps even Endeavor and Endeavour, one named after the concept (with the "correct" spelling) and the other after the the historic vessel (with the "antiquated" spelling)...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Doom Shepherd]

But they’re always in English, which is why it’s “USS Tiananmen” and not “USS 天安门“

 

[Timo]

But that's not English - that's Finnish, which is the language where the name of the place is spelled/transliterated Tiananmen.

It might be more correct to say that the names are in the Latin alphabet exclusively. And in the most limited set thereof, too, lacking all those fancy umlauts or whatnot. Whether a proper name is in any particular language is debatable to begin with.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Doom Shepherd]

But that's not English - that's Finnish, which is the language where the name of the place is spelled/transliterated Tiananmen.

Google translate disagrees.

 

[Markonian]

In the Enterprise novels there was a Andorian ship that had the name Enterprise in Andorian. This was during the Federation era and so there is one more Enterprise to add to the list.

USS Vol’Rala, from Rise of the Federation. It’s Tellarite counterpart are ships named Hrumog.

It might be more correct to say that the names are in the Latin alphabet exclusively. And in the most limited set thereof, too, lacking all those fancy umlauts or whatnot.

A pet-peeve of mine is that the Mobius class from STO is not named Moebius, the better-looking transliteration of the German umlaut.

 

[Tuskin38]

But that's not English - that's Finnish,

Don't you mean Chinese?

 

[sbk1234]

I've always felt that most of Starfleet's traditions were loosely based off the US & British navies and why the majority of ship names were in English rather than Spanish or Andorian (just as two examples). Since we do know that there are ship names that aren't English in origin, I don't see why there can't be two ships from the same design that have the same name but in different languages. In a way, it's not that different from ships in the same class that have similar-meaning names like Enterprise and Endeavour.

That could star being a problem when people are using the universal translator.

“Starship Endeavor, this is the Starship Endeavor. Do you read?”
“We have orders to rendezvous with the Starship Enterprise to pick up important scientific equipment. Then we have to proceed at maximum warp to meet the Starship Enterprise to transfer it to them.”

 

[C.E. Evans]

That could star being a problem when people are using the universal translator.

“Starship Endeavor, this is the Starship Endeavor. Do you read?”
“We have orders to rendezvous with the Starship Enterprise to pick up important scientific equipment. Then we have to proceed at maximum warp to meet the Starship Enterprise to transfer it to them.”

That's when ship transponder codes and hull registries comes come into play, which avoids that problem. But the universal translator has always been rather selective (or possess some kind of smart technology subroutines) to translate some words and not others depending on how they're used in a conversation.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

It would work better with alien names of things, assuming the UT was programmed to ignore the differences. In many different Human languages, words such as honor, dignity, victory, etc, can sometimes be quite similar to each other.

 

[Markonian]

In a similar vein, what about similar-sounding names that mean something different, e.g. USS Concord(e)?

 

[Timo]

The old Spaceflight Chronology had the Mann class starships, and John M. Ford's novel Final Reflection, which makes a lot of use of that Chronology and other old reference books, has a fun moment where the Klingons thing the humans are such vain creatures that they have christened their frontline vessels the Human class...

Also, we're still divided on whether the Vulcans in ENT had a Surak or Suurok class of ringships in service...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Forbin]

One of my kitbashes used a Gundam as the base, so I used the Gundam name and just said it was a Vulcan word:
http://www.inpayne.com/models/kitbash/trekpage_valwalo.html
What the heck.

 

[t_smitts]

There have been at least two Klingon ships named the Bortas, which is Klingon for revenge. Would the Vengeance from "Into Darkness" be translated the same way?