Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships)

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[edit] Standard ship prefixes

Shouldn't a page be created, listing the standard prefixes? Or at least a listing in an abbreviations page. - Olivier

adjectives precede nouns so we should state that such and such is a Big Ship Class rather than a Big Class Ship Lir 01:01 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)

You're misparsing; try (((Los Angeles) class) submarine). --Brion 01:17 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)

How about Los Angeles (submarine class)Lir 22:26 Oct 30, 2002 (UTC)

How about we use the standard that has been in effect for hundreds of years? --the Epopt, who served for many years on Ohio-class submarines

What is the proper punctuation for a ship's name? Is it HMS something or HMS something? -- Zoe

Should be HMS something, though too often people don't bother. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) -- Someone else 03:16 Nov 11, 2002 (UTC)
Since we have an article titled RMS Titanic, should I punctuate it RMS Titanic? -- Zoe
I think properly it would be RMS Titanic or RMS Titanic: i.e., [[RMS Titanic|RMS <i>Titanic</i>]] or [[RMS Titanic|RMS ''Titanic'']] . --- Someone else 03:28 Nov 11, 2002 (UTC)

Someone else is right: "HMS" or "USS" or whatever prefix is not part of the name of the ship, it simply indicates ownership. The name should be italicized, the prefix left in roman type. Calling something "Royal Mail Ship Titanic ("RMS Titanic" for short) is exactly analogous to calling something "Homer's Odyssey" and should be typeset the same way. --the Epopt

[edit] Holland America Line motor vessels

Holland America Line apparently uses a lower-case prefix to designate their cruise vessels, e.g., "ms Rotterdam" rather than "MS Rotterdam," at least on their webpages [1]). I've not seen this done anywhere else. None of the examples and references on this page or on ship prefix show this styling of prefix. Query: Should the encyclopedia use a conventional prefix when referring to these vessels, i.e., "MS", or do we indulge Holland America in their prefix style, i.e., "ms"? This issue has arisen on a couple of edit/reverts I've done. Thanks for your thoughts.--Evb-wiki 18:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation

While updating USS Maine I noticed that several US ships called Maine were on the same page. This isn't that big of a deal right now but in the future these ships need to be disambiguated from each other. So the question is, how do we disambiguate? I would suggest the most natural way to disambiguate would be to use hull numbers in page titles for those ships and have USS Maine be a disambiguation page. Of course all the links to that page would also have to be corrected. Alternatively, USS Maine can be where the most famous ship by that name resides and a disambiguation block can be at top. I know this wouldn't work for all ship's for all nations, or even all US ships, but it would be a natural way to disambiguate most US Navy ships and others that have hull numbers. What does everyone else think? --mav

Why do you think that "in the future these ships need to be disambiguated from each other"? What's wrong with the page as it is today? --the Epopt

As I said there is nothing wrong with the page yet. But as more and more text is placed in the article it is going to become increasingly difficult for people to find the ship they really want if that ship isn't the first one presented. These are all different ships meaning that each is it's own subject and should at some time in the future each have their own pages. USS Enterprise is probably a much better candidate for breaking up sooner rather than later. My only question was whether or not we should use hull numbers in the form [USS {ship name} ({hull#)]] for the names of the new pages. For example: USS Enterprise (CV-6). --mav

Hull classification symbols would work fine where they are used, but most countries and all early USSs don't use them. How would you disambiguate, e.g., the second and third Enterprise schooners? And for a real disambiguation treat, take a look at HMS Enterprise -- or HMS Antelope. --the Epopt
There's always the ugly trick used for battles, namely to add a date in parens. As far as I know, there are no ships of the same country and the same name launched in the same year. For ships with uncertain dates, a "(1550s)" or even "(1400s)" will suffice to identify uniquely.
Those nice detailed multi-ship-generation articles will need to come apart too - disconcerting to link from Jutland and see a description of a 17th-century ship come up on the screen, I'm sure an unsuspecting reader will be mystified. Also, you'd have to read all the dates for the ships to figure out which one must have been meant. Stan Shebs 19:13 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
Well, never let it be said that I'm an arrogant, inflexible pedant. (Of course it's true. I just don't want it said.) Adding the dates is ugly, but it would work, and until the developers decide to allow markup inside links, we need to pipe-alias every ship link anyway. Writing [[HMS Enterprise (1705)|HMS ''Enterprise'', 24]] is not significantly worse than what we're doing now. However, take a look at the third HMS Enterprise, 8 (1743) and the sixth USS Enterprise (WWI). As soon as we split the big articles up, someone is going to want to know why those little stubs can't be combined into a regular-sized article. --the Epopt
That's easy: They are different subjects. --mav 21:19 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
In practice, I would just separate out the biggest articles as needed (usually modern ships, since we always seem to have more factoids about them :-) ). There seems to be little reader advantage in having n 2-sentence articles for obscure ships when you're going to need the "HMS Foo" article anyway for disambiguation. This also has the advantage of being the lowest-energy approach. :-) Stan Shebs 22:01 Feb 20, 2003 (UTC)
It was horribly traumatic ;->, but I split the second-largest ship article, USS Thresher, into two unequal parts. Please review and comment, noting that SS-200 still gets the 30k warning. Also please take a look at HMS Astute and related pages -- they are my first attempt to write new articles under the proposed system.

So for disambiguation purposes (when needed) have we standarized on using hull classification symbols when available and launch dates when not available? --mav

Well, Stan and I seem to have agreed on that, together with an index page at "just the ship name."
Good. That was my choice as well. :) --mav

[edit] Must we use pennant numbers for older ships?

I'd like to re-open the debate about using pennant numbers on Royal Navy and other commonwealth ships before 1945. I'm completely in favour of them after that date, but before that date they create substantial problems:

  • They aren't well known. Only small ships like destroyers and submarines wore their pennant numbers. Few of the major reference works even list the pennant numbers for pre-War or War-built carriers, battleships and cruisers.
  • They weren't permanent. To take an example, the destroyer Cossack changed her pennant three times, from L03, to F03 to G03. Many other British destroyers did the same.
  • The pennant number isn't useful for larger ships. It's much easier to disambiguate by year as it's easy to see that HMS Ark Royal (1938) must be the World War II ship. HMS Ark Royal (91) isn't helpful.

JimmyTheOne 22:05, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] US Naval Historical Center

Note to ship buffs: I've found a great apparently public domain resource that we could use to create starter articles for US Navy ships. I've already adapted some of that free text and images to make USS Langley. Check out the source http://www.history.navy.mil/index.html . --mav

Indeed, the material you're seeing is from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, which is a great source. It's not entirely online, and doesn't list recent ships, so you do have to watch out for silent omissions. Stan 15:32 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Naming of ships from navies that didn't use ship prefixes

User:MyRedDice contradicted the rule I proposed about parenthetical disambiguation -- I favor using German battleship Bismarck, while he favors Bismarck (battleship). Given our diametrically opposite viewpoints, I've deleted both versions of the "rule," so that we can discuss it here before we get dogmatic on in the article itself.

I like the natural phraseology. It's easy to write "The German battleship Bismarck was sunk" -- any newbie can do it. Using parentheses requires knowledge of esoteric Wikisyntax, to wit, the "pipe trick."

--the Epopt

I'm not saying that German battleship Bismarck is better or worse - just that the arguments you gave for it didn't (to me) make sense, because of the pipe trick. Or, equally, if you're going to mention the disadvantage, you should also mention the workaround and link to how to edit a page. Question is, is this the best place to debate natural versus bracketed disambiguation? Martin
I tend to dislike that. It should be pretty obvious from most contexts what nationality she is (or does anybody think Bismarck is Japanese?). Also, "no prefix"? Didn't Germany use KMS (Kriegsmarine Schiffe)? And, while it's convention, I find including "USS", "HMS", &c in the links esthetically offensive. The link should be the ship's name alone. Trekphiler 13:31, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
You may know what navy commissioned Bismarck, but you have no idea which one(s) commissioned Scorpion. The Kriegsmarine used no prefix, as a casual reading of history will reveal. Fortunately we use universally accepted style guides when refering to ships instead of our senses of esthetics. ➥the Epopt 14:49, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Naming of shipwrecks

How about ships that are now wrecks? The SS Yongala is now under Yongala Historic Shipwreck witch I feel is a somewhat wrong title. Anyone with a better suggestion?

See also List of shipwrecks

Gorm 08:52 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

It's a little messy. List of shipwrecks has a combination of named and unnamed ships - for instance, Cape Gelidonya is actually a cape, and the anonymous ship found nearby should have a separate article entitled something like Cape Gelidonya wreck, no italics since there is no ship name. I had thought Yongala Historic Shipwreck was the official name of a marine park around the wreck, but Google seems not to think so, so SS Yongala would be better. So how about:

  • shipwreck info with the regular ship article, unless it is so large and complicated that it needs its own article (Titanic for instance, if someone wrote a lot more about the wreck), in which case the article can have whatever name seems sensible, since it will be pretty specialized.
  • anonymous wreck is named however archaeologists name it, usually a physical location plus "wreck". Stan 13:26 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Naming of Japanese ships

By the way, can we make an exception for Japanese ships? The title like Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi seems silly because there is no Akagi but AC. -- Taku 01:26 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

You mean to say that all the names are synthetic, and have no other possible meaning? For European and American ships, nearly every ship name has some other possible meaning, either as a name or regular word - off the top of my head, I can only think of "Sovereign of the Seas" as a ship name that doesn't have a non-ship interpretation. Stan 02:26 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)
Much naval writing does in fact use constructions like IJN Akagi. The prohibition here is in conflict with many well respected naval authors and histories.
Elde 07:52, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Some are but some not. As usual in ordinary wikipedia article, if there is ambiguousness then do disambiguous. -- Taku 02:47 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

And, there is no need to not have articles like Japanese aircarrier Akagi, which redirect to more common name Akagi. -- Taku 02:49 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

My opinion, for what it's worth, is: it depends. Akagi may be unique to the carrier, but others, such as Japanese battleship Yamato, will need to be disambiguated from Yamato, the ancient Japanese nation. And we will need Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi to redirect to Akagi, simply because ignorant gaijin like me will assume we need it -- I wouldn't have known that "Akagi" was unique if you hadn't made me look. ;-> --the Epopt
(The above is rather ironic in light of later developments at Akagi... Gdr 20:27, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC))

I thought we were disambiguating only when necessary, not when there is only one subject for a title in the first place. That one wants to add the USS or HMS or something like that, I can understand, that could be considered using the full name, but this "countryname shiptype name" thing goes straight against the usage at the rest of Wikipedia, not to mention that it's cumbersome and not rarely undecidable or ridiculous. I might decide to write an article about the Nansen's ship Fram (also served under Amundsen and Sverdrup) - should that be Norwegian exploration ship Fram, Norwegian icebreaker Fram, Norwegian ship-of-a-unique construction Fram, Norwegian museum ship Fram or simply Norwegian ship Fram? To me, Fram sounds much better, or Fram (ship) if someone comes up with some other Fram to deal with. Thus, I completely agree with Takuya Murata here. Andre Engels 14:08 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)

It's extraordinarily common for a ship name to be re-used, more so than most people realize - some countries have even passed laws to the effect that their navy will always have a ship with name X, which virtually guarantees a half-dozen or dozen wildly different ships all with the same name. So we really want to be on top of this problem and pre-disambiguate, just as we do for Quartz Hill, California, even though there seem not to be any other Quartz Hills in the world. If you are knowledgeable enough to say that there is only one Fram and that it won't the pollute the encyclopedia with hundreds of ambiguous references that will need to be cleaned up some day, then I'm OK with that, but we'll get a better product if non-experts adopt the habit of using pre-disambiguated references. Stan 17:56 Mar 21, 2003 (UTC)
Pre-emptive disambiguation makes sense for US cities/places because the great majority of US city/place names are used in more than one state and since "someplace, somestate" is very often used for city/place names regardless of whether or not the city/place name is unique or otherwise unambiguous. So unless ship names have a similarly bad global ambiguity problem and are often pre-emptively disambiguated regardless of uniqueness, then I say we should only disambiguate when a real ambiguity exists (which is the default disambiguation convention which has a great deal of support - I should know since I tried to extend US-type pre-emptive disambiguation to all cities of the world. Needless to say I failed after about a month of trying). --mav

There seems to have been some question as for the proper abbreviation to use before the name to indicate Japanese naval vessels. [2] gives the rule quite clearly - "HIJMS" (stands for 'His Imperial Japanese Majesty's Ship') before the end of WWII; thereafter, it is "JDS" ('JMSDF Defense Ship').

If you don't believe me about the HIJMS, take a look at this page [3] which indicated that no less a person that Admiral Togo himself used exactly that notation. I think I may rest my case! :-)

Jnc 02:13, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)

globalsecurity.org is usually good but not definitive, and they don't state their authority. Togo's use in a personal note is not definitive, because as the website notes, he was consciously trying to Englishify, and quite possibly just made up the abbreviation on the spur of the moment (and possibly globalsecurity.org is using that note as their authority!). To be definitive you need a document that says "this is the official rule" and can trace a sequence of citations back to an original IJN document. It's not critical to resolve this immediately; we can always change things later if definitive evidence turns up. (It's odd that this has been so elusive; most navies have website pages devoted to listing all past and present abbrevs in excruciating detail.) Stan 04:41, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well, I'll let someone else search for the authoritative document, which is no doubt in Japanese anyway, which I can't read! I can cite a use of the term in "Bless Our Ship", by Captain Eric Bush R.N (Allen, Unwin, 1958) who commanded a gunboat on the Yangtze in the 30's, and saw a fair amount of the Japanese during his term there. Not that that's authoritative either, but I doubt he was using a Google search as the source! Jnc 05:00, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)

fwiw, the standard way to denote a ship in the Japanese language is "shipname-maru". This does not specifically mark military ships from non-military, but for our purposes of marking the article as being about a ship, it is unambiguous. Current JSDF website format is to have the ship name written in hiragana script, enclosed in square brackets, and no prefix or suffix, which is unfortunatley useless for our purposes. Rhialto 15:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think your claim about maru is correct. See Japanese ship naming conventions#Maru. Gdr 17:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
It's not. Maru only applies to merchantmen. On the disambiguation issue, maybe I'm missing the point; isn't the name clear in context? Or does this only apply to disambiguation pages? In which case, I'd suggest "Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi" is only really necessary if there's another ship Akagi (as may happen). Or am I full of sh*t? Trekphiler 13:40, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More naming of Japanese ships

Moved here from Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships)/Japanese to keep discussion in one place.

The list of Japanese ship names contain some links to Japanese provinces and cities since some of the ships are named after those places. I am wondering if it is appropriate to make all of the links for all of the ships into ex. Akagi (aircraft carrier) since I do not know which ships are named after provinces or cities. In this way there would never be a clash. Similarly, some of the battleships are named in the form Japanese battleship Yamato to avoid this. I would like to rename them to Yamato (battleship). Is this the correct path to take or is there another suggestion? Thanks. Ark30inf 22:57, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Don't count on me much but it seems battle ships are named after old provinces such as yamato or musashi while small ships are named after month names such as yutsuki (notice tsuki means moon and month in Japanese). -- Taku
I am intending on putting in some more ships and would like to see a common format for all the titles. P.S. My intention was to put in the translated names of the ships at some point so English readers can understand what the names actually mean. "Red Castle" is a neat name but most English speakers know it only as Akagi without knowing the meaning.Ark30inf 23:09, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I don't see any established convention yet. As long as consistent, your proposal should work. Please check if there is a wiki project working on this issue to coordinate with others. Also it would be nice to have a mutual links between places and ships. Good luck! -- Taku
I found a convention. It looks like there is some dispute about what the prefix for Japanese ships is. It is listed as IJNS/IJSDFS some places but this does not follow the convention that the prefix should be the same that the crew used when the ship was in service. So, since there is no settled prefix, the correct titles would have (nationality) (ship type) (name). I wish we had a firmly settled prefix, but will go with the recommended version at this time.Ark30inf 23:35, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Have you taken a look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) and Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships? I must admit that in the only articles I've written, I've named the articles Japanese cruiser Nachi, Japanese cruiser Haguro, and Japanese cruiser Ikazuchi but been inconsistent and named them IJN... within the articles, which really ought to be removed. Arwel 23:57, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think I got the title names straight. Now I want to have a list of the names of the ships translated into English (example: Akagi means "Red Castle"). Would it be best to have a new article like maybe Translations of Japanese ship names or would it be best to just put the translations on the current index page next to the ships? Thanks.Ark30inf 00:53, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I like literal translations belong to each corresponding article because it seems norm here. See other Japanese-related articles. But certainly there is no objection to make such an article Translations of Japanese ship names. -- Taku
I normally agree, but having the real meaning of these names in one place in addition to the article seems useful to me. I am thinking that the ones named after provinces, etc. will get grouped together. The names are particularly beautiful and interesting as far as ship names go. I think I will give it a try, if it doesn't work then it can go to the deletion pile, no harm done.Ark30inf 03:37, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Do it! I've always wanted a compete list of translations, & never found one. If you start, I'll dig out my lists of translated names & add what I can. Trekphiler 13:44, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] USN naming practice for ship classes

It should be noted that USN practice uses the forms lead ship name Class and lead ship type hull number Class interchangeably. It's equally correct to refer to the Ohio Class or to the SSBN 726 class.

Elde 07:52, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Not knowing a lot about ship names, is there any reason why HMS Royal Oak and HMS Royal Oak (1914) both exist or which is preferred? I know ship names are often re-used, but I haven't seen the year format used on many (any?) other articles. The text in both articles is identical. --Chuq 21:56, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Accident of reorg, probably. There have been seven Royal Oaks, of which the 1914 ship is the seventh, so HMS Royal Oak will get the list of choices when I get around to typing them in from my printed source. There are relatively few capital ships of RN whose name hasn't been re-used, so nearly all such ships will need a year (or pennant, if recent) disambiguator. HMS Victory can be an exception, because it's so much more famous than its couple of predessors. Stan 23:54, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Capital letters or italics?

I was an Admin clerk onboard a ship. The ship was always typed with all capitol letters on all correspondence. My ship was the USS CORAL SEA. I believe all American ships are to have capitol letters?WHEELER 16:51, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The official U.S. Navy Style Guide (http://www.news.navy.mil/tools/view_styleguide.asp?sort=S) states:
ship names - For first reference always include USS, the ship's name and the hull number: USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75).

Exceptions: Do not use "USS" for ships before 1909; or if she is not yet in commission; or she has been decommissioned and you are referring to the ship in her present state.

There is no hyphen in the hull number. In All Hands text, the ship name is in italics. On second reference, use only the ship's name. Do not use "the" in front of a ship's name: "USS San Jose," not "the USS San Jose."

Ships are to be referred to as "she" or "her."

Ships' nicknames are placed inside quotation marks on first reference only. USS LaSalle (AGF 3), the "Great White Ghost," sailed into San Diego.

Ship names are not in all caps. Use USS Seattle, not USS SEATTLE.
I note that we are violating some of these standards, but not the last one. --the Epopt 18:43, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
All caps is one of the standard ways to simulate italics on typewriters and plain ASCII, as is underlining. Stan 20:41, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Vessels with number but no name

Could someone clarify the correct naming convention for "unnamed" submarines such as E15 and AE2. My interpretation is that they should be at British submarine E15 (currently at HMS E-15) and Australian submarine AE2 (currently at AE2 via HMAS AE2). In none of the books I've read have I seen them prefixed with HM*S - it just doesn't feel right. Geoff/Gsl 23:20, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)


I think the proper usage is, as with all UK Submarines, HM Submarine (abbreviated HMSm) E15 etc. Submarines are not ships and, after consulting group of serving officers, it transpires that HMS, whilst a common usage, even in official documents, is incorrect for that reason. Similarly there are a number of other exceptions to the HMS rule:

a) HM Motor Survey Launch (HMMSL) Gleaner (1983) - both usages can be seen on its home page

b) HM Yacht (HMY) Britannia (1954)

The usage HMS only evolved over time and the initial usage designated the type of ship, hence His Majesty's Bark Endeavour, also HM Frigate Unicorn. It is only after c. 1815 that the usage 'HMS' for all types of ship became common.

The Endeavour is, btw, a special case in that there was an Endeavour already in service and the Admiralty specifically assigned the name 'Bark Endeavour' to Capt Cooks ship.

The earliest ships didn't use any designator at all, hence it's the 'Mary Rose' not 'HMS Mary Rose' etc. The use of a prefix evolved, as far as I can make out, from 1700 onwards and was far from consistant, for example the same letter might cpatitalise 'His' or 'Ship' in one place and not do so in another. Brooke of the Shannon used 'HBM ship' (meaning 'His Britannic Majesty's ship) at least once.

So, HMSm E15 or, more conventionally, the current HMS E15

Rick

--81.174.205.72 18:56, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You make a good case. However, see http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/static/pages/5445.html , et. al. -- the Royal Navy seems to disagree with you. --the Epopt 19:05, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
It's not uncommon for a government agency to throw out old rules and impose new ones retroactively. Continental Navy ships were not designated "USS" at the time, but the modern Navy uses the prefix anyway. Oxford Companion says earliest use of H.M.S. was in 1789, but doesn't mention any other abbrevs. Something to keep in mind is that a random mix of various prefixes and no prefixes would result in chaos. Any non-HMS warship of the RN should have very good documentation, like a record of an Admiralty clerk being flogged for using the wrong term :-), and of course the article itself will need text explaining the situation, so later editors don't come along and try to change it back. MOD web pages are not sufficiently authoritative for this kind of thing, there's not actually a QA team going through pages to check them for accuracy. Stan 19:50, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Gadzooks, if the Ministry of Defence is not an authority on its own ships, who in the green and pleasant world is? --the Epopt 21:05, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There's a difference between the "Ministry of Defence" and "subcontractor non-expert who created a web page without the MoD knowing about it". :-) Web pages are generally good, but I don't like to rely on them without somebody more authoritative as the source for the web page content. I'm sure you've found as many obvious errors on govt web pages as I have... Stan 18:29, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The RN disagrees with itself then! As I said, I consulted a group of serving officers on this subject late last year and, after research and discussion, was told that HMSm was the correct form. I suspect nobody would object to HMS and that the HMSm form, although technically official, could be said to be 'almost obsolete'.

Despite this advice I have never found HMSm in recent official publications. I suspect that the 'm' has been dropped over time and S now stands for 'Ship or Submarine'. I have seen it occasionally in older publications but quick research on-line shows HMS being used in signals etc. in WWII. In 'long form', however, it is exclusively HM Submarine or His Majesty's Submarine. Perhaps it would be best to use 'HMS E15' short form and 'His Majesty's Submarine E15' long form.

btw HMSML Gleaner is official, in use, and used on that same website.

On older ships:

Long abuse approves the use of HMS for older ships but preferably not prior to 1800 or thereabouts, perhaps even later. It would be a shame if the information regarding the period nomenclature was omitted from articles. Personally I would prefer the form Royal Charles (Br) (16xx), as used (usually without the date – btw I assume that the commissioning date should be the standard) in history books for ships before the common use of HMS.

This should also, I think, apply for the USN – we find, for example, Capt Issac Hull designating his ship 'The United State's frigate Constitution' and his defeated opponent 'his Britannic majesty's frigate GUERRIERE' in an official letter in 1812. Yet things were changing: Capt Carden describing himself as 'late commander of His Majesty's ship the Macedonian' in a letter to the Admiralty in the same year and in 1815 Capt Biddle superscribed an official report 'US Ship Hornet'

Rick --81.174.205.72 21:16, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It sounds like you're really talking about style rather than correctness, and our responsibility is to define and use a style that is most useful for 21st-century readers. While it might be amusing to write articles in 18th-century style, we don't do that - we use modern idiom, we use names in forms recognizable to modern readers, we spell words consistently, and so forth. While it's certainly worthwhile to describe the confusing usages of yesteryear, because it helps readers decipher old material, it is completely counterproductive to let archaisms leak from article content into encyclopedia structure. Stan 18:29, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Actually I'm trying to talk about correctness, the avoidance of anachronism and not conveying false information. With the current naming standard you end up with either: HMS Endeavour for a ship referred to as Bark Endeavour or HMS Bark Endeavour (His Majesty's Ship Bark Endeavour, Ships and Barks being different things). And what about the Naseby? HMS Naseby when there wasn't a monarch when she was in service?
Its logical to use the well known 'HMS' where there is a reasonable argument for it being correct but it would be misleading to head an article HMS Someship when the Someship was probably never referred to as that. It would be similar to referring to the SMS Bismarck (info: SMS applies to the pre 1919 German Navy). It would be as wrong as referring to HMS Sir Galahad rather tahn the RFA Sir Galahad (or USS Taney rather than USCGC Taney). Try thinking of 'Blank Space' as being equivalent to a string of initial letters and you might have a better chance of seeing what I'm trying to get at.
Almost as an aside, if 'consistent spelling' is going to be applied to ship names, how will the several RN ships of the 1700-1800 period with idiosyncratic, foreign (usually captures) or just plain misspelt (verbal instructions to the man who wrote the name down) fare? Will they be listed under an name they never had?
Rick--81.174.203.9 20:36, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
You have a logical argument for "blank space" as equivalent to a prefix, but in practice it would result in chaos for RN ships. We don't actually have a rule that we only use a contemporaneous name - we have Livy for the person known as Titus Livius during his lifetime, "Alexander the Great" is an English construct that could not have existed in his own time, etc. Sure, "HMS" is a more-modern abbreviation, but I don't think we we want to expand article titles to His Majesty's Ship Britannia, except of course during Queen Anne's reign, when it would have to be Her Majesty's Ship Britanna (redirs here we come!). I have no conceptual problem with alternate names for some of the oddballs like Endeavour and Bounty (we can finesse Naseby because she was renamed to an HMS later :-) ), as long as they're well-documented - a letter sent by the commander is not good enough, it would have to be multiple official documents, or a work by an authoritative historian that the article can cite. Those can be handled case-by-case as needed. And you're right, spelling of captures is very tricky - sometimes I have the resources to answer, others I just make an executive decision, document that I've done so, and wait for someone to come along with better evidence. Stan 22:29, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The key is, as I see it, that the title you use is for an article is usually regarded by the unknowing reader as being one of the generally acceptable forms in use today. Whilst you can point out the correct name in the text the unconscious assumption is there. In an Encyclopaedia that attempts to provide correct knowledge knowingly encouraging the reader to believe that which is not true is bad practice.
I fail to see how setting some reasonable cut-off (which can be discussed) for changing 'Blank' to HMS would produce chaos when its perfectly acceptable to change from SMS to DKM in 1919 for German ships. A simple redirect would deal with those doing a search for 'HMS Mary Rose'.
How the nationality of an 'unprefixd' ship would be designated is another matter, I don't see the need for 'His Majesty's Ship' etc, particularly as there wasn't a laid down form of nomenclature at the time (an article on RN Ship naming will be forthcoming).
I'm reluctant to submit or contribute to articles with the knowledge that they have to, or will be made to, conform to rules which encourage the reader to believe something that was not true at the time (that the prefix 'HMS' was used) and isn't true now (that its usual to refer to a particular ship as 'HMS Someship').
This is beginning to sound like a troll. It isn't, but its sounding like one so I'll make this my last post until I've got that article worked up. Rick--81.174.203.172 23:22, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I don't want you to be discouraged before you've even started! I've been focussing on why we do things a certain way, but have also been careful not to say that it can't be changed; there have been many cases where somebody comes in with a good idea and it "sweeps the Wikipedia". No feeling quite like having a small army of elves going through and updating hundreds of articles in order to put a new scheme in place... I'm looking forward to seeing your writeup, because I've been poking through my personal library and am not finding much on the subject of nomenclature, nor even much consistency in the way that people refer to ships in general. Prefix-less names mostly concern me because of ambiguity; as a general encyclopedia, almost every unprefixed ship name will be ambiguous with something completely unrelated, and that will result in bogus links everywhere - the net effect is to require masses of disambiguation pages and xrefs, and it will take quite a bit of effort to fix it all. Plus everybody who comes later will need to understand it well enough that they don't mess things up again with their own edits. To take a particular point, since the use of "HMS" doesn't have a well-defined starting point, we would have to make an arbitrary choice of year - and what about ships whose lifespans include before and after? But as you say, let's focus on some content (with references, so I can know what books to add to my apparently impoverished collection :-( ), then work up a specific proposal. Stan 03:50, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the fascinating discussion. Clearly the history of naming RN ships deserves an article itself. That said, I shall stick to the prevailing WP policy of prefixing with "HM*S". Geoff/Gsl 05:48, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have to disagree with the style manual here. Would Americans accept "USS PT-109" if someone in the Pentagon decided to "update" the name? I don't remember seeing "HMAS" applied to the two Australian WW1 subs until recently. A search for "AE1 OR AE2 submarine -hmas" on google gets 28,800 hits [4]. A search for "HMAS AE2" OR ""HMAS AE1" gets 363 hits.[5] The fact that the Australian government has recently decided to use "HMAS AE_" is neither here nor there, since they are clearly outvoted. It is ahistorical and I think if governments decide to retrospectively change the names of ships, I think we should be fighting any such changes.
Another thing which bugs me is the use of italics for vessels which definitely only have pennant numbers for names, such as PT boats or U-boats, but maybe that's just me :-) Grant65 (Talk) 13:38, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
I just noticed that a sum total of two .mil pages do use USS PT-109, which kind of supports my point.Grant65 (Talk) 13:44, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Jeez, I never realized prefixing got so complicated! (Lucky me, I've always dealt with WW1 & newer...) As for PT-109/PT-109, I take the attitude, she's a ship, italicize her name. (I seem to recall S.E. Morison disagreed. Scroom.) If you're doing an RN naming page, include USN, RCN, IJN, KM, & Sov Navy. (I'll help as much as I can, which probably won't be much :-0) Trekphiler 13:57, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Optional use of prefixes

For the above reasons and since there appear to be no objections, I propose the removal of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships) insistence on the use of prefixes in regard to vessels normally known by a pennant number. In other words it will remain optional, for those who insist on HMS A1, etc. Grant65 (Talk) 00:32, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ships which changed nationalities

Hi. I noticed that it says to create a new page for each new nationality of a ship, but only if the ships name changes as well! Um....it's the same ship! The was the carrier (Venerable?) which was British, then Australian, then Dutch, then Brazilian. it sepnt only about 3 years in the first 3 navies. The pages for this ship had the same details on each page, including details of its time in the other navies. There's no point in this. It is much easier for people to follow the ships career if they don't have to click back and forward through 4 pages to check and compare dates, etc. Put it all on one page. Link to that page from each reference to any name the ship had. I'm not sure why you'd not create a new page if the ship changed navies but DIDN'T change its name. Enterprise (1) in one navy might well be Enterprise (3) in another its tranferred to. It would seem to complicate things if it was left as Enterprise (1) even when referred to under the new countries flag. SpookyMulder 11:27, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Same ship, more or less, but with a different crew, possibly local modifications, different armaments, etc, so the now-gigantic sidebar box would have to have a column for statistics for each nationality, have all the naval jacks stacked along the top, and a montage of photos, one for each nationality. Also, the linking becomes nonsensical - a list of Dutch ships has apparent British ships on it, which is pretty weird-looking. You could also end up with a situation like HMS Macedonian vs USS Macedonian where the ship would be under HMS, even though 97% of her career was in the US Navy. Readerwise, clicking makes a nice "break" (OK, we're going to the Netherlands now, different navy, different conventions). I think the "no new article if no name change" is not actually followed - the reasons I've cited apply whether or not the ship's name changed. I'll give it a decent interval before changing. Stan 14:50, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Depends why people want to read about the ship (the ship, or the navy?). If the Macedonian was built as British, then it would be listed in the "British frigates list" page, as well as any other list page it belonged to, but each link would link back to the same page on the actual ship. that works, right? so you'd SEE a link with just the name of the ship on (or the prefix as well; im not sure that the prefix is that important, but people seem to like mentioning them insted of just the name) but the linked-to page would tell you "this ship was built British, then captured in 1812 (?) and renamed "xxxx" etc. The captain would change, but the folowing would likely stay the same:

  • dimensions and displacement
  • armament (maybe)
  • rigging
  • crew size
  • speed
  • builder

Listing a ship under a new navy gives the impression that that navy built it, that it was part of that navies ship program when it wasn't. You might be confused you mention. Well, seeing a French ship listed as having been built in Portsmouth might be confusing, also, don't you think?

Note that captain/crew numbers/armament/displacement/name etc. can change even if the ship doesn't change navies! I don't see that changing navies leads to such a major amount of change that couldn't happen otherwise, and also the changes that do occur may be quite minor (only different captain, different flag). I really don't think that having one ship described fully on one page is going to prevent any particular detail of the ships history from being mentioned. And like i said, the changes you mention (and more) can happen anyway, so that really can't be your reason for requiring additional page/s for the ship, right? People are aware that ships can change names/flags/captains. Breaking the ships career up into intervals which may be quite short, then having to repeat information on 2, 3, 4 pages (the liner given by germany to Russia, then Austria, then...some other country...in World War 1 is a case in point), some of which may contradict (do you check each page whenever you update any of the other pages?) will just lead to confusion, wasted time, and make it harder to get a clear picture of what the ship actually did. SpookyMulder 12:53, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

If you have multiple articles, each should refer to the other in abbreviated fashion ("Built as ..."), at least if the information is available, so you're not repeating the same stuff over and over. Changing navies entails conceptual changes too - for instance the British system of ratings is purely British, wouldn't be used on a US ship, even if captured from the British. The choice of separate articles vs one is a standard WP debate, comes up in a lot of contexts, and there's no standard answer. Partly it depends on one's model of the reader; if the reader is settling down in front of WP to read it like an online book, then fewer articles are better, and you want to have more continuous narratives. If the reader is using WP as a reference work to settle an argument (as I did just yesterday, on a music question), then you want articles that get right to the point. I tend to favor the "reference work" model, which for instance is why I write self-contained lead paragraphs, instead starting with one of those long rambles about the ship's construction dates that never actually says what kind of vessel it was. If I'm poking through a list of US ships, and Macedonian redirects to an "HMS" article, that's going to give me pause, and I have to think if this was a mistake or what. If ship info is cut up into per-navy chunks, it makes the body of a country's navy info "clean" and self-contained, at the cost of requiring an additional couple of clicks to read a continuous ship narrative from beginning to end. Another thing that happens with accumulating conceptually-multiple articles into one is that "what links here" gets mystifying - for instance, if Phoenix and General Belgrano are one article, then "what links here" would show Phoenix as being involved in the Falklands War, which is only really true in the sense that some atoms of the hull were there. :-) But again, one can make a good argument either way; if it becomes a major sore point, then the usual thing is to call for a vote to set the policy - it may be that I'm the only person who thinks this way, in which case I'll be outvoted. Empirically, it would be a good idea to continue to be active and do your good work for a couple months, and to observe polls and how they go on other pages, before putting the question - relatively new people can lose out in polls because voters will tend to side with oldtimers rather than considering a proposal on its own merits (just like in real-life politics :-) ). Stan 14:41, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese ship names all changed

User:N328KF moved all the Japanese ships from names like Japanese battleship Yamato, as agreed here, to names like HIJMS Yamato.

I don't think this is right. Even the Net of Million Lies doesn't believe in "HIJMS": compare Google for battleship Yamato -HIJMS -space (8,900 hits) with Google for battleship "HIJMS Yamato" (75 hits). There are no hits for "HIJMS Yamato" from .mil or .jp domains.

So what's the justification for this move? And if not justified, who's going to put them all back? Gdr 19:13, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

It turned out that I put them all back. Gdr 22:23, 2004 Nov 1 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation: Hull symbols

I'd like to reopen an old discussion. Why are hull symbols considered the "most natural" way of disambiguating ships with the same name? It would be better to simply use the year of launch or commissioning for most or all disambiguations.

Hull numbers are a specialist's tool, like a library number or ISBN number. You can distinguish two books with the same title using their ISBN number, but I would never do so except in a database. General readers won't always know what hull number are, and even people who know some naval history won't know the numbers of most individual ships.

In an encyclopedia, we should disambiguate in a way that makes it clear to a general reader which ship we're referring to. A hull number will only do this for a reader who already knows quite a bit. By constrast, any reader who is aware of a ship's existance would know roughly when it was in service. Isomorphic 16:53, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hull classification symbols are completely ubiquitous in material about the United States Navy. For other navies there may be arguments both ways. Here's one in favour of pennant numbers: the pennant number is often visible on the side of a ship: see for example a photo of a Flower class corvette [6]. "K213" is clearly visible, therefore this is HMS Poppy (K213). Gdr 17:30, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC) Can you name these ships without looking at the URLs? [7] [8] [9] [10]
I never said that hull classification symbols aren't useful information, or that nobody uses them. I just don't think that using them in article titles is the best choice for a general-purpose reference work. Titles, as I said, should make clear to the reader what the subject is. John Smith (UK politician) tells any reader which man we're talking about. Barrel (firearms) makes it clear that we're discussing guns, not fluid measure or a storage container.
By contrast, a hull number won't help most people. The titles USS Wasp (CV-7) and USS Wasp (CV-18) do nothing to distinguish the pre-war carrier from the one built to replace it unless the reader knows their hull designations. USS Wasp (1936) and USS Wasp (1943) would make the distinction clear to anyone who knew that both ships existed. Isomorphic 19:40, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Agreed. But on the other hand when you compare USS Connecticut (BB-18) with USS Connecticut (SSN-22) you can tell that one of them is a battleship and the other a submarine. Whereas "USS Connecticut (1904)" and "USS Connecticut (1997)" wouldn't make this clear. Gdr 21:45, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)
Concur. Especially for younger readers, who might know Ohio only as a FBM, not a BB... Trekphiler 14:06, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

As a restatement of the above, hull identification numbers are used by the militaries to identify specific ships/boats as they may have more than one vessel by that name over their history. They may also carry considerable information about the vessel's purpose (for example, USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19) carries land forces (the L) and was a command and communications vessel, the nineteenth hull built for this purpose.) For the lay reader this might not be useful, but it is certainly a unique identifier and conveniently suits the Wikipedia naming conventions. - Amgine 23:46, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with Isomorphic that hull numbers aren't necessarily better in all instances. Hull numbers work well for the US Navy where the numbers are unique. They work much less well for other navies. It would be better to use the year of building or commissioning. JimmyTheOne 22:12, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hyphen between USN hull type and number?

A truly minor issue about ship naming -- Is there a technical reason for a hyphen between the hull type and hull number for US naval ships -- that is not standard US naval usage as shown in the US naval register http://www.nvr.navy.mil User:ClaudeMuncey

(moved from Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions:)

Yes, it is minor, but does it affect searches? The U.S. Navy has strongly deprecated the use of hyphens in part because of its affect in database searching. - User:Amgine (not logged in)

(1) The hyphen doesn't seem to affect searches. A Google [search for http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aen.wikipedia.org+cvn-68 site:en.wikipedia.org cvn-68] finds the desired page as the #1 result. Maybe if you know what the problem is you can explain. (2) Wikipedia is not the United States Navy, so we don't have to follow its rules. However, we do our best to follow general scholarly conventions, so if you can show that writing hull numbers without hyphens is preferred by naval historians, we should certainly consider changing our convention. (3) The US Naval Historical Center and the DANFS both use hyphens. So if they can, surely we can? Gdr 11:14, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

[edit] Standards

I was contacted about my changes and examples- I had noticed some issues with the current standards. One would be that a designation is not neccisarily a acronym, and replacing a designation with the name for a class can result in a made up name. Another is that in many cases the exact name of a country is a point of countrovesy, for example in the case of bismarck it is really a ship of greater germany, under Nazi Germany. It also needless complicates transitions in a country when the ship name remains the same, such as the many transitions of ships between the USSR and Russia. It is much smaller to abide by more general standards in many cases, which also avoids attempts at classifying a ship which tends to only be vaugley accurate. For example the pocket batteships are label just as battleships in the name of keeping the name shorter, yet just calling it a (ship) would achive -being shorter, -more in line with general standards, - be accurate. The importance of abiding by commonly used names is important as well, rather then more obscure but perhaps more techinically correct terms. Im not in love with any of these changes, but I do believe there are issue's here that need to be confronted. Nautical 04:02, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I had created a number of examples to go with the changes, but these have since been mostly reverted unfortuenly. Needless to say there is serious problems with current naming standards, which is resulting in obscure and un-used names. Other area's must cater to popular naming, yet for example something like PT-109 has a essentually made up name. Google returns 40 hits for the phrase "Patrol Torpedo Boat 109" (searched as a phrase with the quotes) whereas ( "PT-109" )turns up 95,000. The naming system borders on orginal research in some cases and isn't even line with the rest of wikipedia standards.
Another example would be bismark. In popular culture by far and away the most common meaning of bismark- not anything else. Instead its a redirect only semi-correct and controversial name that isn't even as conscise as if it abided by general wiki standards. In the case of the Kuznetsov, labeling it as soviet only results in needless complications of clarifying between soviet and russian use. At most most ship names, especially ones found more in popular culture need a simple, minimal disambig. the same as other area's. Nautical 04:46, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Have you read all the discussion on this page, and at the WikiProject page? Our main problem is that we now have thousands of ship articles, and consistency of naming is more important than what Google tests happen to report on any particular day. To make an analogy, think of somebody living in California, who might say "well, Mountain View, California is just ridiculously verbose, what other ones could there be!?" Now take a look at Mountain View. Ditto for Bismarck, etc. Now I grant you that "PT-109" always seemed worth making an exception for, and I said so on its talk page some time ago, but nobody else agreed, so I left it alone. In areas where nobody has much of an opinion, your hand is free, but a cursory examination of past discussion should have shown you that a number of people had already thought about all this, had come to conclusions, and implemented them. There are a great many areas where WP "pre-disambiguates" - naval ships are one, US towns and British peerage are two others, while British towns are not, for reasons that have been much-debated in their respective projects. Stan 06:13, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I did look over the previous debate actually, and I though some wrong decisions had been made. The need to standardize is good one, but when it comes to the most popularized naval items its better to abide by general standards. For things like the bismarck, its not wikipedia's job to invent to new names but to abide by common usage. I intended the modifications to the standards not as replacements but rather parallel exceptions for certain cases- as even the best rules require exceptions.
The project rules as a general matter are helpfull for keeping things in line and a close enough to any real world categorization and keeping order- fair enough. Certainly for many ships, especially the more obscure ones help, however, there exists a significant portion where the logic behind the rules ceases to exist, and can actually work against goals.
There isn't a problem with having exceptions to rules, when the ones most effected tend to be ones that are the least in need of being brought more in-line. Another issue is when the naming creates uneeded page, or more problems. For example, with ships that changed hands but kept the same name, removing the country of origin means the title is more general, but also more correct.
Its good to have rough and tumble rules that keep general order, but there is a place for refinement. I think ships can be evaluted not just as members of naval 'things', but also cultural icons that need to be where and how people expect them. The amount of de-standardization it creates is counterbalanced greater eloquence, adherence to general wiki standards and popular culture. The thing that intially promted me in this analysis and really brings the issue to a point is something like the pt-109 page, where one of the most well known us naval vessels is given one the most obscure names used for it.
Im not interested in changing the mainstream standards, but I do see a case where rules are not being followed for there intial logic and benifit, but rather for the sake of being a rule. In this case, standarized exceptions can allow the a basic guidline to maintain its effectivness, while at the same time stop it becoming a menace. With ships, there are certain amount of cases where the benifit of a standardized exception exceeds the benfit of a baisic guidline. In short, lets keep the main thing the main thing- and the main thing isn't some rule, but creating the best pages possible. When the rule gets in the way of that, its time to start makeing carfull, standardized exceptions. Nautical 07:38, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If you think the conventions could be improved, propose a change here and see what people have to say about it. We can certainly have exceptions to the rules if they are justified. For example, we have Mary Rose, not HMS Mary Rose (1510).

However, it is worthwhile to minimize the number of exceptions. Having a consistent naming scheme is very useful for editors, because being able to work out the name for an article allows you to link to it without having to look it up to see if this time it's an exception. Also it means that you can link to an article before it exists and have some confidence that when the article is written the link will work. This saves a lot of work for the editor and doesn't affect the reader. After all, PT-109 still goes to the right place. Gdr 13:07, 2005 Mar 17 (UTC)

Well basically it would just be to not follow the standards, when the benifit to disobeying it exceeds the damage. In one intances, it would mean allowing the most commonly used names for certain things to be the page name. I don't by the idea that 'well it redirects' because on the logic, having the most obscure and incorrect name would be ok. I think there is a case for defffering to the standard wikipedia disambig- not no standard, just having the wikipedia standards circumvent the ships ones. The cases, would just be ones that cross over. For examle, if making a pape for a little known chiliean then the standards make sense, but it in the case of the bismark, its wikipedia job to cater to the popular naming and not used contrived names. So something like PT-109 could just used PT-109, with the page name people would expect, not a lesser known name developed out of this project. Its just things like, in other words, rules for the rules. If the rules are causeing problems, its time to make make them 'smarter' so to speak.Nautical 04:24, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] French Navy

Posted from an on-going discussion on French Navy.

There are already naming conventions for ships. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships). If you think they are wrong, or you think French ships need to be named in a different way, please raise the issue and discuss on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships). Gdr 11:30, 2005 Mar 17 (UTC)

I am not a big fan of the NATO prefix "FS" which isn't used in France (especially for ships which pre-date NATO), but on the other hand there are small issues with the policy of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships):
  • Some navies have specific cathegories of ships; for instance, the French navy uses the word "frigate" for destroyer-size ships (whose hull number has a "D"). This might make the name of articles difficult to predict (for instance, someone looking for the destoyer Forbin might not find it in "List of naval French ships" because it is categorised as a frigate)
  • with namings like "French frigate Surcouf" and "French submarine Surcouf", it is impossible to tell whether a ship is in commission or not anymore, which I think would plead in favour of puting a date (possibly the date of commissioning) in the title.
I will post these questions on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships) as well (I though that Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships was the right place to do so).Rama 12:59, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

To answer your second point first, I don't think we should attempt to use the name of the article to indicate whether a ship is in commission. If we did, then we'd have to rename an article every time a ship is commissioned or decommissioned! Inevitably this wouldn't be done, articles would get out of date, and links would rot. We don't try to do this for other navies, so why for the French?

On your first point, I'm inclined to agree with you. Here are some possible approaches:

  1. Make liberal use of redirects, e.g. French destroyer Forbin → French frigate Forbin.
  2. Change the naming conventions to use the generic "ship" instead of "destroyer" or "frigate" or whatever?
  3. For the problem of finding ships in lists, use "see also"s where necessary.

Make a proposal here and see what people think. Gdr 13:19, 2005 Mar 17 (UTC)

I didn't mean to say "in commision", but rather "Surcouf_(1934)", for instance (the date is bogus). This is already used on Wikipedia for other navies.
The other point is tricky to solve:
- redirects are possible, but they might be problematic in some cases (when you have several ships of categories which end up getting mixed)
- "Ship" will be of little use when you get several ships all named the same... this removes the purpose of having any label at all... Rama 14:00, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The strength of using launch years for disambiguation is that in conjunction with name, it is nearly guaranteed to be unambiguous - it's basically impossible for a navy to launch, lose, build another of the same name, and launch, all in the same year. (It has happened, with smaller RN vessels in the 18th century.) Adding a type name is a convenience option, like having "DD" in the hull designation of a US destroyer; if there is any confusion, just drop back to "ship". A useful exercise is to create a bunch of articles for French ships, both old and new, not worry overmuch about the names, then step back and review the totality. A lot of what makes sense for modern-day things breaks down when you try to, say, document all the French ships at Quiberon Bay. Stan 17:27, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More on hull numbers for USN

We should come to a consensus on which hull designation to use for ships. Some (many) ships that saw decades of service had their hull numbers change over the years. For example, the Knox-class of frigates were all commissioned as DEs, but later were changed to FF. Others moved from DD to APD and back again. Many ships have transferred to MSC and are now prefixed with "T-", like Mercy (T-AH-19).

I don't particularly care what we pick (first one, current one, last one), but would like some consistency so random editors don't run around changing things back that I thought I had set right. So we have an opening bid, I'll make the argument that the hull designation that the ship was commissioned with should be the article title. That way, as the ship goes through her career, we're not moving articles around. Obviously the generous use of redirects will keep the links straight. Jinian 11:37, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

In the process of sucking down various DANFS articles, I tried to figure out what their system was; the nearest approximation seemed to be a combination of "time in service" plus "best known", but I don't think it was as simple as "first commissioned". Otherwise you'd have a bunch of CVEs such as USS Bogue (CVE-9) given the obscure designation "ACV". We're not the only ones driven crazy by all this - more than a few publications use "CL/CA-25" instead of trying to pick one or the other. I would say "best known", which lines up with the general rule, and "first used" if there are several candidates equally well-known. Talk pages notes rationalizing one's choice are recommended. Stan 14:22, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I had moved one page which started at FF, back to FF. Really it was just because the footer was setup for the frigate naming. The time based one sounds decent. Maybe we could make a new standard like 'USS Stan (DE-111/FF-111)' rather then having to choose (or perhaps USS Stan (DE-111, FF-113). I dunno if this hybridization is already used for something else, or perhaps its to fair from normal. Nautical 04:42, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The problem we run into doing the DE-111/FF-111 is a ship like USS Goldsborough (DD-188). Through the years of service she was DD-188 (2 years), AVP-18 (< one year), AVD-5 (3 years, including some combat), back to DD-188 (3 months) and then APD-32 (18 months with combat actions). An article title like USS Goldsborough (DD-188/AVP-18/AVD-5/DD-188/APD-32) is not particularly useful. I can't imagine that a random editor would use that title to link to this ship.
By time she might be AVD-5 and one article in Wikipedia (a list o'ships) currently links to her that way. By "importance" - which I'm not sure how to judge - she might be APD-32. By original commissioning, she's DD-188, and how I created her article.
In the case of the Knox class destroyer escorts/frigates, I could see a case to be made that since the entire class of ships was redesignated, we should use the new designation. Such "mass redesignation" would cover the Bogue-class of carriers as well.
So, perhaps, the article title is the commissioning hull designation, unless the entire class was re-designated, in which case the title is the new class designation. Individual ship conversions should be noted in the intro sentence – "USS Goldsborough (DD-188/AVP-18/AVD-5/DD-188/APD-32) was a...." –, but retain commissioning hull designation as the article title.
I wouldn't mind "best known", but have no idea how to judge that. Jinian 20:57, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
"Best known" is only useful when there is a great disparity; 6 mos when first commissioned, vs 20 years of active service, or 4 years in combat, vs 20 years in mothballs before scrapping. If it's not totally obvious, then declare that there is no "best known" and just go with the first. There is a point where the issue gets so arcane there is probably no one in the naval community that will have any rule or opinion on the issue; at that point we should feel free to adopt our own. Stan 03:15, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Stan's best-known/first-used principle looks good to me. I add it to the naming conventions. Gdr 19:05, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)
Gdr, I like what you did, but think it misses one important case.
I'd like to address the "mass reclassification" issue, since it impact the class pages as well. Are they Knox-class frigates or Knox-class destroyer escorts? They were all launched as destroyer escorts, but reclassified enmasse to be frigates. Same story with some of the destroyer leaders. The more I've thought about this, the more I prefer to use the new classification as the article title and name of class. I'd hate to have to go through each Knox-class ship and make an individual determination on whether she should be a FF or a DE. It makes more sense to have them all be FFs. I'll update the naming conventions to cover this case, unless there are some objections. Jinian 17:06, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
You're right, it makes sense to make this determination once for a whole class of ships rather than for each ship individually. Go ahead and make this change in the naming conventions. Gdr 19:06, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

[edit] Royal Navy submarines with no name

Royal Navy submarines from the early 20th century typically have no name, only a pennant number. At the moment we don't seem to have any consistent way of referring to them. There seem to be three possibilities:

  1. Run the letter and number together (examples: E11, M1). Advantage: matches the way the pennant number is painted on the side of the vessel.
  2. Use a period between the letter and number (examples: A.1, B.1). Advantage: matches the way the vessels are named in J. J. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy, Greenhill Books, 1987.
  3. Use a hyphen between the letter and number (no examples). Advantage: matches the way we write USN hull numbers; matches the usage in some other reference works, e.g. Houghton-Mifflin Ships of the World [11]

It would be nice to agree on a standard. I don't have any strong preference in the matter. The Google test seems to favour form (1) but the other forms are well represented on the web. Gdr 13:02, 2005 Mar 29 (UTC)

I prefer (1) since it matches the way the HMS ships do their pennant numbers (HMS Invincible (R05). Consistency within the same Navy is more important than consistency with USN or a reference tome. Jinian 17:19, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Jane's 1919 uses (1) with a small space between letter and numeral(s). A quick poll of some of my other books returned six using (1) and one using (3). The dot in (2) sort of gives the effect of the small space while making the name unbreakable. I am used to using (1) but have no problem with adopting the others if they are preferred.
Looking through Jane's, there are also unnamed Royal Navy monitors (eg. M33), patrol boats (eg. P31), P.C. boats (eg. PC55) and torpedo boats (just a number, eg. 30). Perhaps whatever is decided for submarines should be used for all RN "letter-numeral" names. Geoff/Gsl 21:34, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think that we should have a common standard used for all RN ships with this type of name—this is more important than what the standard actually is. I would prefer (1) partly because it was what was actually written on the side of the vessel and partly because it seems to be the most common form in books. I have been trying to determine which is "more correct" but it is inconclusive - e.g. the RN Submarine Museum (e.g. [12]) dispenses with the dot but Churchill (who as First Lord of the Admiralty also ought to have known) uses the dot (e.g. page 815 of volume IV of The Second World War). --Jll 10:14, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It looks as though the consensus is for form (1). I'll add a note to the naming conventions and move the necessary pages. Gdr 11:11, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

[edit] French ships prior to NATO

For vessels of the French Navy in World War II, should we still use the "FS" designation, or should we use the "(nation) (type) (name)" format? Any difference for ships that served with Vichy France? Oberiko 18:42, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It has the advantage of being simplier, but loses the historical signification. But the historical signification is awkard anyway, since the "FS" prefix is not used in the French Navy itself, and also since France has not been a member of NATO for most of the history of the organisation.
a priori, Vichy France should not be different from "regular" France, since they saw themselves as the continuity of the legitimate French government and, as far as I know, used the same terminologiy as the IIIrd Republic (French Navy, French Army, etc...); the Gaullists, on the other hand, while also seeing themselves as the legitimate government, used the specific terminology "FFL" (Forces Françaises libres) and FFNL (Forces Françaises Navales Libres).
I must say that I have arbitrarely used the "FS" prefix for all French ships, but I was not aware of all the subtleties of the naming conventions of Wikipedia, so do not hesitate to change this is you see it fit. Rama 19:38, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Marine nationale doesn't use prefixes. Their website at http://www.defense.gouv.fr/sites/marine/ talks about "Aconit" or "Frégate Aconit", never "PREFIX Aconit". (Of course, government websites aren't definitive, but other evidence points the same way, e.g. Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia, which is happy to use prefixes like HMS, USS, CSS, etc, uses plain names for French vessels [13].)

So I think we should follow the naming conventions and use "French (type) (name)" for all French ships, Vichy, Free, NATO or otherwise. Gdr 17:03, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

100% agreed. We don't use KMS, IJN, or other such prefixes if they aren't offically applied by the ship's owner. NATO attaches a prefix for identity reasons to all NATO ships, but most of these are inappropriate to use here since they aren't consistent with the navy-in-question's naming method. Josh 00:50, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dutch Ship Designation

(moved from User talk:Gdr)

Browsing through the Dutch Navy articles, I noticed two things. 1) The use of the prefix HNLMS to indicate a ship of the Royal Netherlands Navy and 2) A rather terse remark in the Royal Netherlands Navy article indicating HNLMS is actually incorrect and anglo-centric. Going back through the history of the De Zeven Provinciën (F802) article, I noticed you made the change from "Hr.Ms." to "HNLMS", so I was wondering what the rationale was for doing this. Jeroen 09:34, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

HNLMS is the usual English translation of Hr.Ms and Zr.Ms., widely used in English-language works on naval history. "Anglo-centric" seems a bit unfair: it's just a translation. However, if there's consensus that the Dutch spelling is preferred then we could certainly make a change (as long as its done consistently).
If we did decide to change, what would we do for ships that have changed from Hr.Ms. to Zr.Ms. or vice versa? Gdr 09:41:03, 2005-08-02 (UTC)
I guess the question is whether things like HMS and Hr.Ms are part of the actual name, or just a title like Mr. or PhD or something. Does the designation actually change for all ships when a female monarch steps down and a male monarch ascends, or does it only change for new ships? Also, how is this done in the reverse case? I believe British and American ships remain HMS and USS, and not, for example, "VSS" or "Hr.Br.Ms".
On the other hand, if it's an established practice in existing literature, why change that practice just for Wikipedia? Jeroen 10:24, August 2, 2005 (UTC)
I don't know. We really need the person who added the comment to Royal Netherlands Navy to help us out, but it was an anonymous editor. Gdr 15:01:07, 2005-08-02 (UTC)

[edit] Names of French ships

From a discussion occurring at Talk:Louis Thomas Villaret de Joyeuse about whether articles should be considered to be part of the name of French ships.

Ken Johnson includes the articles (hence names like "the La Naïade") and tells us:

Following standard set by William Cormack in his authoritative work Revolution and Political Conflict in the French Navy 1789-1794
This is particularly useful to differentiate from the British ships that sometimes carried the same name.

He certainly has a point, but on the other hand, this looks really bizarre to me, as it probably would look to you to read "Le The Victory appareille...", and that's not something which cannot be fixed with a "the French ship Something..."; I also would tend to think that it is illusionary to want to make the ship's names unambiguous like this, since cases such as "the English ship Téméraire" would still occur. I will also make no mystery of the fact that, as a French speaker, "the La Naïade" fells like a poke in the eye.

On a technical sidenote, some French ships do have a "le" within their names, and telling which ones actually do is rather tricky; it happens sometimes when the name is an adjective, in which case the preceding "le" has the purpose of substentivating the adjective (that is: Téméraire = "Temerarious", but Le Téméraire = "the one who is temerarious" -- I have come to suspect most of the French SNLE to be in this case; but if the French submarine Redoutable is often written as Le Redoutable, the French ship which fought at Trafalgar most often is as Redoutable); note that this doesn't happen with names formed with common names (Mistral, Tonnerre, Orage, Vengeur du Peuple, ...) or from names of people (Surcouf, Dugay-Trouin, Lamotte-Picquet, ...)

Well, sorry to be a little bit of a headache, and thank you for your thoughts. Rama 06:39, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

"The La Naïade" is simply wrong: even if the article is part of the name, it still functions grammatically. For an English example, consider USS The Sullivans: "The The Sullivans" would be just as wrong. Gdr 12:46:24, 2005-08-17 (UTC)
Somewhere, I think on the project page, there was a discussion about whether to include a definite article - "The Constitution raked the Java" vs "Constitution raked Java". There seems not to be a hard-and-fast rule, though some evidence of writers deliberately favoring the latter. The latter rule would be a clever way to finesse the issue here; "Constitution saluted La Naïade" reads generally OK to both English and French ears. Stan 18:15, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hull type designators which have been changed in-service

Hello,

I would like to discuss the issue of CVA->CV, CVAN->CVN, CVS->CV, etc., for U.S.N. aircraft carrier designations.

Some carriers – for instance, CV 59, CV 60, CV 61, CV 62, CV 63, CV 64, CVN 65, CV 66 and CV 67 – have seen their hull type designation changed during their service in the Navy; An example is CVN 65 which has been previously called "CVAN 65", or CV 63 which has been previously called "CVA 63".

These differences all come from an obsolete Navy practice of dividing all non-light carriers into "anti-submarine role", "attack role" etc. But these differences completely seized to exist, still within the service time of CV 59, and all carriers were named either CV or CVN.

I suggest that for any carrier, the most general (e.g. "CV" is more general than "CVA") designation used for her within her service time(*1) would be used for her in the article title. That is in order to abolish the use of obsolete Navy terms, and also to simply present the carrier in its real role – no matter that some time in the past it has been limited to, say, ASW.

Any comments and proposals would be very welcome.

1. That, for instance, excludes CVA 58 from the scope of this discussion, for it has never entered service and will always remain "CVA 58". --A.R., 12:29 May 06, 2006 (UTC)

It's hard to say where I stand on this. For example USS Ranger (CVA-61) (as it was originally named) spent 18 years of commissioned service as CVA-61. It was then redesignated CV-61 where it spent another 18 years in service before being decommissioned. To me either designation seems to fit. I don't want to just make a sweeping change though and try to conform each ship to a designation to "abolish the use of obsolete Navy terms". These terms help show the various motives within the Navy to classify ships for different types of service (and then changing that role to suit different needs as time progresses). -- malo (tlk) (cntrbtns) 19:28, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merchant Ships

Is it worth documenting specific rules for merchant ships? typically these named with the convention of "[shipping line] [vessel" or "[shipping line] [vessel", for example, the MSC Pamela and Kirsten Maersk, over time there may be more than one veseel with the same name, which could lead to ambiguity, however each hull is assigned a unique Lloyd's Registration Number, but this information is not readily available (Unless the vessel has been to Australia, where it would be detailed at: [14] ) Ratarsed 20:27, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Another issue with the convention on merchant ships would be those operated by Holland Maas Shipping which names its ships with the 'HMS' prefix Ratarsed 20:27, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

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