Whats in a name

[tigercat]

How do people choose names for their Whiffs?

Presumably a lot will be variants of existing names or similar names to those already built by the company.

What about Ships

Names that catch your fancy? Cancelled ships?

[NARSES2]

Must admit I have great difficulty choosing names for aircraft. Most of my builds are re-paints so no problem but prototypes/projects that were never named give me difficulties. I try and use that manufacturers naming convention but anything I choose sounds silly to me. Strangely the names other site members choose for threir creations always seem so natural ?? 

As for ships, I'd just use the naming convention that the user would have used

[Maverick]

Have to agree with Chris there.  If it were an American bomber for the RAF for instance, you'd go with the obligatory US name, like the Washington, Maryland, Boston, etc.  There's frequently a 'formula' where the naming convention follows a pattern and that results in something that 'makes sense'.

In fact, I did a run of 'alternate histories' using Soviet Yak twin engined jet bombers as 'RAF 1946' fodder.  I used a continuing theme of names for the series to give it a sense of 'logic'.

Ships are another kettle of fish and something I've never had any sort of understanding of.

Regards,

Mav

[lenny100]

the modern royal navy has a class naming structure and is slowly going through the alphabet giving names such as the current type 45 are all D, so they could be called the "D" class destroyers the next available letter is "F" so my type 26 will have the name beginning with that letter, as for aircraft name the RAF  seems to like wind type as fighters such as tornado and typhoon , so you might see the return of the hurricane before to long.

[thesolitarycyclist]

Before the Spitfire British fighters were named after birds and Before the V bombers all bombers were usually named after British or Commonwealth towns and cities.

[PR19_Kit]

Before the Spitfire British fighters were named after birds and Before the V bombers all bombers were usually named after British or Commonwealth towns and cities.

I'm not so sure about the bird names. How about the Gloster Gauntlet and Gladiator, Bristol Bulldog and Hawker Demon and Fury etc.

Many seemed to have been alliterative, but Hawker seems to have used all sorts of naming conventions.

[tigercat]

Ship naming seems to be full of historical oddidities in WW1 we almost had 4 Monitors named after

General Ulysses S. Grant, General Robert E. Lee, Admiral David Farragut and General Stonewall Jackson

however as the USA was still neutral at the time they were dropped

We did however have 2 Monitors  Marshall Soult and Ney  named after two napoleonic marshalls

The Navy seemed to have been a bit unsure about Monitors naming most of them after Generals I guess if we had them nowadays they'd be called HMS Montgomery &  HMS Frost etc.

[Rheged]

the modern royal navy has a class naming structure and is slowly going through the alphabet giving names such as the current type 45 are all D, so they could be called the "D" class destroyers the next available letter is "F" so my type 26 will have the name beginning with that letter,

A  lot could depend on  whether the ships are classed as destroyers or frigates.    Destroyers tend to be alphabetical, but frigates can be  in  specific groups  Leander class for example, or the Dukes

[NARSES2]

We did however have 2 Monitors  Marshall Soult and Ney  named after two napoleonic marshalls

Those 2 in particular have always puzzled me 

The RN has always been very, very territorial about its naming rights. When Gen Slim built 2 gunboats in Burma during 1944/45 and named them HMS Pamela and HMS Una named after Mountbattens youngest daughter and his own daughter, their Lordships got the right hump and numerous cables followed 

[tigercat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mimi_and_HMS_Toutou

What about these two which were effectively HMS Meow and HMS Woof Woof

[Rheged]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mimi_and_HMS_Toutou

What about these two which were effectively HMS Meow and HMS Woof Woof

............and what about HMS Zubian?  The "cut and shut" uniting of the remains of Zulu and Nubian.

[Taiidantomcat]

I do a lot of Russian and Japanese models, so the trick is finding a name that matches and hasn't been used yet! 

[tigercat]

Plus of course for Russians you need a NATO reporting name.

[scooter]

With my Delta Dart rebuild, I went through a few different variations before settling on F-38 Phoenix.  Which I really need to finish the 48th scale version of...but finding a fully transparent canopy's a bitch

[Weaver]

You can often use the naming convention to have a sly dig or tell the reader something about your future history without clumsy exposition. For instance, I once schemed a series of American space-ships with the following names:

USS Abraham Lincoln
USS George Washington
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
USS John F. Kennedy
USS Richard M. Nixon
USS Ronald Reagan
USS Jesse L. Jackson
USS Joanna Rogers
USS Rakesh Patel

Of course time moves on, and it's amazing how it's shock value has diminished since the early 1980s.....