His name was actually "his horse is crazy," and not simply "crazy horse." So the warrior was name for his possession of a mentally challanged riding beast.
Only Earth names for starships?
- Thread starter Mage
- Start date
Lexington and Yorktown are easy, like i said before when someone (possibly you, Forbin) brought up this idea before - just tell them it's named after a city/town and that many of your vessels are named after places on Earth or elsewhere. ignore the battle part.
First contacts should only be carried out by the USS Please Be Our Friends.
And then it turns out that the species you made first contact with has a martial culture that does not respect as equals anyone who tries to be overly friendly or sycophantic, and instead views such cultures as cowardly and duplicitious, and therefore unworthy of trust or respect. In fact, once they hear such a sycophantic name, they just decide to open fire right away 'cos they think you're probably just doing it as a ploy to get them in a vulnerable position and slip a knife in their backs.
Ya see? We're screwed no matter WHAT we do!
His name was actually "his horse is crazy," and not simply "crazy horse." So the warrior was name for his possession of a mentally challanged riding beast.
I did not know that!
See, now, that's using your head.
I think that the earth centric and mind numbing anglo centric nature of the names only gets really irritating when the ship names start getting lame and unimaginative like USS Wyoming and USS Rhode Island (Rhodes would have been far more interesting). I mean, really...they could not come up with ANYTHING more interesting? Those feel like the script writer filled in temp names and no one bothered to replace them in the final version. (not surprising that both are from Voyager).
Moving a discussion/debate over the appropriateness of the use of the "USS" prefix on starships of the Federation Starfleet from the "That doesn't count!" thread here, as it seems more appropriate:
And a Japanese woman was responsible for creating the universal translators they used, as established in "Demons." And a British armory officer kept that ship alive in firefights. And a person with no established nationality was its helm officer. And a Vulcan woman saved that same ship numerous times.
So what makes Japan, Britain, Vulcan, or the Earth Cargo Authority less deserving of recognition in their prefix?
Besides, again, the point of a prefix is to quickly establish the ship's nationality. Federation starships are Federation starships. It defies the most basic purpose of a ship prefix.
And a Japanese woman was responsible for creating the universal translators they used, as established in "Demons." And a British armory officer kept that ship alive in firefights. And a person with no established nationality was its helm officer. And a Vulcan woman saved that same ship numerous times.
So what makes Japan, Britain, Vulcan, or the Earth Cargo Authority less deserving of recognition in their prefix?
Besides, again, the point of a prefix is to quickly establish the ship's nationality. Federation starships are Federation starships. It defies the most basic purpose of a ship prefix.
That's just because it's what you're used to. Plenty of ship prefixes sound just fine -- ARA, RMS, BNS, HMCS, ARC, HDMS, KDM, BAE, FNS, FS, FGS, HS, INS, LÉ, ITS, JDS, ROKS, KD, FSS, ARM, KNM, ORP, RFS, SAS, FNV, PNS... Okay, maybe not PNS.
More than that, very American-named ships. It would make far more sense for the ship-builders to focus on geographical places, Countries, Provinces, Cities, Islands, Seas, Major Rivers and Lakes, Deserts, Mountains and Jungles/Rainforests/Savannahs and Wildlife, moons, stars and constellations. Or concepts, USS Defender, USS Pioneer, USS Sentinel etc as well as the Royal Navy's love of names like HMS Indefatigable, there have been 7 of those. Or what about naming a set after Federation Member worlds? It suggests a randomness about both designing and naming things rather than a "this type shall be Excelsior and we shall name ships....Crazy Horse (a person) .... Valley Forge (a battle) ....Melbourne (a place) ....Repulse (an idea)." Just a lack of attention to detail there.
Of course, if you must have battles remembered, along with your Normandy's (although you might be taking too Western a take on the Second World War given that it was actually the Red Army that did the heavy lifting in breaking the German Army whilst the British put more of our efforts into first staying in the war and then bombing Germany into the stone-age), there should be a good spread through history and across the globe, Chinese show-downs like the Battle of Red Cliffs or in India, the Battle of Talikota, or the Fall of Constantinople that snuffed out Byzantium for good, all of which were pretty pivotal in their respective nations.
Naming things USS Lexington or Saratoga or Yorktown, well, we know its important to America, but its not all that important to other parts of Earth (unless you look at it from the perspective that USA itself is very important at the moment, but in a world post-nation states a USS Lexington is a little anachronistic) and never-mind that one Army involved was in open rebellion during these battles and the war itself was plenty avoidable. It suggests, perhaps, that the producers take too narrow a view of our collective, global history, particularly given that the 21st century is unlikely to be another American century, and appears that the emerging power-houses, China, India and Brazil and other big movers are forgotten about or there's an assumption of American-led mono-culturalism, which is disappointing.
Of course, if you must have battles remembered, along with your Normandy's (although you might be taking too Western a take on the Second World War given that it was actually the Red Army that did the heavy lifting in breaking the German Army whilst the British put more of our efforts into first staying in the war and then bombing Germany into the stone-age), there should be a good spread through history and across the globe, Chinese show-downs like the Battle of Red Cliffs or in India, the Battle of Talikota, or the Fall of Constantinople that snuffed out Byzantium for good, all of which were pretty pivotal in their respective nations.
Naming things USS Lexington or Saratoga or Yorktown, well, we know its important to America, but its not all that important to other parts of Earth (unless you look at it from the perspective that USA itself is very important at the moment, but in a world post-nation states a USS Lexington is a little anachronistic) and never-mind that one Army involved was in open rebellion during these battles and the war itself was plenty avoidable. It suggests, perhaps, that the producers take too narrow a view of our collective, global history, particularly given that the 21st century is unlikely to be another American century, and appears that the emerging power-houses, China, India and Brazil and other big movers are forgotten about or there's an assumption of American-led mono-culturalism, which is disappointing.
Last edited:
But at the time that TOS was originally in production, we (the country in which Star Trek was being made) were very much in the middle of a "American Century." Using USS made sense given the intended audience. By this point in time the die is cast, and we are basically "stuck" with the USS prefix.
However, the US Navy does use a prefix other than USS on some of it's ships (USNS for United States Naval Ship), and at some point Starfleet might be shown to do the same, depicting Starfleet starships under the command of civilian employees instead of commissioned officers.
FSS too might make a appearance, as say a Federation Council passager ship, completely separate from Starfleet. Civilian interstellar vessels could have a mixed bag of prefixes, based upon whichever member world they're registered out of.
Well it wasn't a "rebellion" seeing as Britain at the time of those battles was no long the established government of the region. It's difficult to see how war could have been avoided, if Britain had simply washed their hands of America and walked away, the other British holdings around the world would have taken notice, and begun to issue their own declarations. Even with the chance of failure (which was realized) Britain had to be seen to fight America's move to independence and sovereignty. Even after their defeat, the bloody nose they gave America help keep the British Empire together, for a while longer.
They do, sort of. None of this is ever actually spoken onscreen, but it's mentioned on readouts and stuff. There have been vessels with registries starting with NAR, NGL, NDT, and a few others. I think NAR was the most often used, usually as civilian ships.
Naming things Saratoga, Lexington and Yorktown may have nothing to do with the battles they were named for and everything to do with the ships that originally bore the names.
To date, there have been 5 US Naval ships named Lexington, 6 ships named Saratoga, and 5 Yorktowns. Between now and 2161 there are bound to be more. Each of those ships have unique histories that a future service like Starfleet might want to honor. Like Enterprise, its a good bet that there were also early UE spacecraft with those names.
Lets examine that
USS Hood (No doubt named for the HMS Hood)
USS Excalibur (British Myth/legend)
USS Intrepid (Several HMS Intrepids but not a USS as far as I'm aware)
USS Victory (Named for the HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship)
USS Exeter (named for the town of Exeter in Southern England)
USS Repulse (Named for the HMS Repulse)
It'll be a fair bet that if you traced several of the ships names seen in Star Trek back far enough their origin would be British, which is hardly suprising given America's history.
There's been a few USS Intrepids, but the only notable one is the WWII Essex class AC.
She was involved in multiple actions in the Pacific and is now a rather famous museum.
There hasn't been another US Navy ship named Constitution in 200 years. Because "Old Ironsides", USS Constitution, in Boston is still considered on the active Naval vessel registry. So do we suppose that it doesn't survive into Starfleet's time? Or do they consider it belonging to a separate service?
Just looked up USS Constitution. It's still considered on active service as part of the Atlantic fleet. Until 1975 it had the identification number IX-21. Not bad for a ship that's 214 years old.
Just looked up USS Constitution. It's still considered on active service as part of the Atlantic fleet. Until 1975 it had the identification number IX-21. Not bad for a ship that's 214 years old.
I would propose, instead of naming them after people, concepts that people can get behind, Constitution is completely appropriate, but, more importantly, non-English speaking countries' things, here's a list of ships in the French Navy. And one of types in the Chinese Navy as examples.
I would rather they got away from such a narrow English-language and American focus. It was indeed eminently appropriate in the 1960s when America and Canada were this franchise's only markets and the producers were pandering to their audience (and potentially themselves). It's not anymore. It's an international phenomenon, watched in every corner of the globe, a fundamental part of the global popular culture. The world has changed and globalised and the franchise must do like-wise if it wants to continue. In essence, its not American anymore, it belongs to all of us and ought to keep that in-mind.
What I was trying to say, but what was obviously not gotten over at all, was that naming something after a battle say. For example, one side (the US) claims Lexington as a great victory for freedom, the other (the British) remembers that the same battle was a Rebellion against the internationally recognised legal authority (the Crown specifically and Parliament), no matter that it had a long-term consequences, is, in this era of cultural relativity, where everybody's opinion is equally important and there is very little definite truth or fact, somewhat delicate. Particularly if there were various opportunities in the run up to a conflict or disaster to avert the crisis or decisions made and actions taken that only served to exasberate the situation and were not actually necessary in the first place, the utterly mad Stamp Act is the great example here, but there are lots of others dotted through history. Even calling something Tiananmen is potentially hideously awkward and likely to be edited out in a Chinese broadcast, simply because as astonishingly brave as those protesters were, they failed in all of their aims. China remains a nominally Communist country and sadly, it looks very much like it will remain so for some time to comes. Would you choose to name something after Mrs Thatcher? The Argentines would never allow it or forgive you, despite the fact that their military defeat as well as economic meltdown in 1982 destroyed the credibility of military rule once and for all and they reclaimed their freedom in consequence. You can't name anything after an Israeli either, or after Theodore Herzl father of Zionism or certain Arabs for the same reason, its not socially acceptable to some audiences. National identity is not likely to disappear completely, no matter how long the union lasts, identity is built into us. The Scots, the Bavarians, the Catalans and more violently, the Chechens and the Timorese show that as a few examples. Any space navy, real or imagined would have to remember that and the producers of Star Trek didn't.
You want to name things after people, stick to cultural figures like Shakespeare or Mozart or scientists like Nicola Tesla or Alexander Fleming that really changed the world. Much less delicate. Unless you are debating who invented the television itself, that's a truly never-ending argument....
I would rather they got away from such a narrow English-language and American focus. It was indeed eminently appropriate in the 1960s when America and Canada were this franchise's only markets and the producers were pandering to their audience (and potentially themselves). It's not anymore. It's an international phenomenon, watched in every corner of the globe, a fundamental part of the global popular culture. The world has changed and globalised and the franchise must do like-wise if it wants to continue. In essence, its not American anymore, it belongs to all of us and ought to keep that in-mind.
What I was trying to say, but what was obviously not gotten over at all, was that naming something after a battle say. For example, one side (the US) claims Lexington as a great victory for freedom, the other (the British) remembers that the same battle was a Rebellion against the internationally recognised legal authority (the Crown specifically and Parliament), no matter that it had a long-term consequences, is, in this era of cultural relativity, where everybody's opinion is equally important and there is very little definite truth or fact, somewhat delicate. Particularly if there were various opportunities in the run up to a conflict or disaster to avert the crisis or decisions made and actions taken that only served to exasberate the situation and were not actually necessary in the first place, the utterly mad Stamp Act is the great example here, but there are lots of others dotted through history. Even calling something Tiananmen is potentially hideously awkward and likely to be edited out in a Chinese broadcast, simply because as astonishingly brave as those protesters were, they failed in all of their aims. China remains a nominally Communist country and sadly, it looks very much like it will remain so for some time to comes. Would you choose to name something after Mrs Thatcher? The Argentines would never allow it or forgive you, despite the fact that their military defeat as well as economic meltdown in 1982 destroyed the credibility of military rule once and for all and they reclaimed their freedom in consequence. You can't name anything after an Israeli either, or after Theodore Herzl father of Zionism or certain Arabs for the same reason, its not socially acceptable to some audiences. National identity is not likely to disappear completely, no matter how long the union lasts, identity is built into us. The Scots, the Bavarians, the Catalans and more violently, the Chechens and the Timorese show that as a few examples. Any space navy, real or imagined would have to remember that and the producers of Star Trek didn't.
You want to name things after people, stick to cultural figures like Shakespeare or Mozart or scientists like Nicola Tesla or Alexander Fleming that really changed the world. Much less delicate. Unless you are debating who invented the television itself, that's a truly never-ending argument....
Last edited:
Tian'an'men means Heavenly Peace. What's wrong with a ship named USS Heavenly Peace?
and never mind the Argies, many Britons would never forgive you naming a ship after the Rusty Lady
and never mind the Argies, many Britons would never forgive you naming a ship after the Rusty Lady
Similar threads
- Poll
