What would be revealing is the class name of the Shenzhou. If she's of the Mercury class (or, for all we know, Soyuz class, "pre-refit"), then we're talking about a thematical naming scheme. And in Trek, that tends to go with humble and secondary vessels such as Oberths...
Perhaps it's only after a name from a thematical group gets distinguished through heroics that it begins to be perpetuated separately from that group. So USS Shenzhou of Madagascar class would be a ship with a historically significant namesake, because the ship name and the class name don't share a theme.
You get my gist? All starship names begin as parts of thematical groups, much like warships are named today; this goes with, say, the NX ships which are an "early" grouping. But we seldom witness consistently thematical classes in Trek - which in my argument is because Starfleet after the ENT days is already old enough to have recycled the good names half a dozen times (Enterprise-E and Yamato-E being cases in point), and doesn't have to resort to themes. Except with secondary ship types where small ships are built in great numbers, hence the general Oberth theme (which is already wearing thin by the time of TNG) and the Danube theme.
Timo Saloniemi
