Naming Themes!

[DavidBowman]

Inspired by katateochi's What will you call your 1.0 craft? I was wondering what themes do you usually go after when naming your vessels.

I usually go mythical! Greek gods and creatures, Persian mythical creatures, sea monsters (All hail the Great Old Ones, All Hail Cthulhu! Hail!)

Recently, I started using Lord of the Rings' lore. Tons of names there!

[Guest Darth Gerbil]

Acronyms and then an optional pseudonym, e.g: V.L.M.O-4 Penguin. (Vertical Liftoff Manned Orbiter-Version 4)

[TrevTrevarian]

Lately I've been going with important historical members of the scientific or space exploration communities, e.g. Hawking, Tyson, Aldrin.

[Scotius]

My naming themes depend on the mood In some saves i name my ships after gods and heroes from various mythologies. Sometimes i use bird or animal names, mythical creatures or poetic names stylized after "Pillar of Autumn" from HALO games.

[CG_Kerbin]

I name them after what kerbal first filed it. It's a good way to horrnor the first kerbal that dared fly it

[kStrout]

I name them by how I use them, followed by a number designating what generation of rocket it is. Most of my crafts are called: orbiter 1, medium lifter 1, duna rover 1, etc.

[Loligoat]

Lately I've been doing acronyms. Like DIE (Dunan Ion Explorer). Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong during that mission. Coincidence?

[laythelover17]

Most of the time I'll come up with a cool sounding word then add a MK __ to it. that usually works.

[ImJake]

I name my manned ships after birds and unmanned stuff after insects. I'll add roman numerals to it if I upgrade the craft with only minor additions. The bird/insect its named after depends on the purpose and size of the craft. A rover might be called a Rhea while a mothership a Condor. Then I'll rename it in flight depending on the body it's on/orbiting and how many of it are already present if it is meant to permanently be there. So an example craft might be "Moho Snipe III 2"

[DavidBowman]

Lately I've been doing acronyms. Like DIE (Dunan Ion Explorer). Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong during that mission. Coincidence?

I think not!!

- - - Updated - - -

I name my manned ships after birds and unmanned stuff after insects.

I might have do that sometime. It's just that I don't know many bird or insect names. At least not in English!

[LostOblivion]

Most of my craft names start with K.

[eddiew]

I'm sticking with prefix-suffix construction, where the prefix is the nearest NASA/ESA mission, and the suffix relates to the kind of craft. Suffixes are either birds for probes that never land, insects for probe landers, mammals for crewed rockets/ships/landers. Leads to fun things like:

Messenger Falcon (Moho orbiter probe)

Viking Bear (crewed Duna lander)

Mariner Cicada (Eve probe lander)

Rosetta Cricket (unmanned asteroid 'lander')

Dawn Orca (crewed Dres orbit-and-return ship)

Why not have both aesthetics and function from your names?

Though for reasons unknown, all my SSTOs break the theme completely and get names like Lance, Broadsword, or Slingshot...

(And of course, I got into trouble when I started adding some Kopernicus planet packs )

[Wjolcz]

Recently I try to name my crafts after greek alphabet letters. There are plenty of cool sounding ones. Might also think about naming them after the US army alphabet thingy. "Flying Epsilon Whiskey" sounds pretty awesome imo.

[Moss]

the US army alphabet thingy.

Did you mean the NATO phonetic alphabet?

[babale]

Each series of crafts (series being defined by the purpose of the craft) has a letter, followed by a version number. The craft also has a nickname. So for example, my most basic crafts are lifters -- after all the first thing you do in a campaign is lift up. So I have the A1 Launcher, A3 Orbiter, A12 Workhorse, etc. My B series are reentry crafts -- pods that can reach orbit and come back down. So the B3 Glider is a command pod with wings that gets carried up by an A3 or A4, reenters, and glides down to the runway, while the B1 is just a pod with a chute.

[Wjolcz]

Did you mean the NATO phonetic alphabet?

Yes! I just forgot the name of it.

[TheZenGuy]

I name my missions on the Greek names of my destination, e.x: mun mission is called Artemis _.

Rockets are named after Latin translations of birds.

Landers are named after famous explorers.

Crew vehicles are named after famous ancient vessels. My mainstay MPCV is called the Argus. (Jason and the Argonauts.)

Anything unmanned is given it's destination's first three letters and it's abbreviation. I have a sat called MunOSS-I (Mun Orbital Satellite System - Impactor)

[mythbusters844]

I usually name my crafts by smashing the keyboard until something interesting comes up, which I modify to make it even more interesting and fitting.

Ex: *SMASH* dflkjh nope

*SMASH* jklsaf nope

*SMASH* daoha ooh

*30 seconds later* The Daoha I is ready for launch!

[loch.ness]

In my current career my naming convention is "Program/Project nickname + Mission Acronym/vessel name + Mk."

This leads to Munatic MOR Mk 1 - (Mun program - Mun Orbit Return mission) and Vulcan DTV (Duna Program, Duna Terrain Vehicle "Desert Tortoise")

Some programs have dedicated names for separate sub-assemblies, such as the Desert Tortoise rover above and the Munatic's Frued CSM and MAL-Volio (Munar Adventure Lander).

I've got my Longjump ATM (Altitude Test Rockets) - but no consistent name yet for my early orbiter program(s) or station(s). I don't think I've made it past Duna on a career save (and my current save has probes on their way to Duna and Ike with a transfer window in 45 days while I try to figure out how many Snacks (the mod) I need to pack for a mission that long ( - well and design the craft, get them in orbit and fueled, and find a way to fund all of that... otherwise this window will pass without a manned mission.

[theJesuit]

Various angels and saints. Some of which moved around on whirlwinds.

I like the idea of birds and insects though!

Peace.

[ZaPPPa]

Norse mythology, starting with letter A.. up to Z

Aegis

Bragi

etc..

http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/norse-mythology.php

[Alshain]

I name my planes after Birds and then just come up with anything for rockets.

[JebNeedsHelp]

My ships are simply named - where they're going and what they're doing when they get there. Eve Colony Attempt Four went very well, and soon morphed into Eve Colony Alpha. Tylo Lander Attempt Seventeen, however... not so good. Eighteen's on the drawing board.

[General Rarity]

Parodies of various real world spacecraft, ie Polygon instead of Polyus, Neutron instead of Proton, Union instead of Soyuz (they mean the same thing though), Phoebus instead of Apollo, Moho instead of Mercury, etc., is how I usually name stuff.

But if it's a shuttle-like vehicle, or if there's a whole fleet of 'reusable' crafts, they each get unique names such as Gagarin, Armstrong, Korolev, von Braun, Shepard, Glenn, etc.

[Cydonian Monk]

Hmm. Naming themes. Well, I use a few different ones, from Birds of Prey (Kestrel, Hawk, Falcon, Eagle, etc), to (semi-)Famous Cartographers and Engineers. Think for v1.0 I might add in some Native American place names (Kanawha, Etowah, Tenasi, etc), but other than that I'll probably just keep burning through the birds and famous folks.