Looking for ship names for a Sci-Fi RPG campaign

So...one of my GURPS campaigns that's been on hiatus for a while might be starting up again.

There's a lot of space adventuring going on (the party has their own courier/smuggler ship), and every now and then some player asks me about other ships in the area.

One thing I'm not that great at is coming up with good names on the fly, so in preparation for this I'd like to set up a list of decent names to pick from in advance.

I'm looking for input in several categories (got some examples already):

• Warship
  • ANS Valiant (Alliance flagship)
  • ISS Cannae (Empire cruiser)
  • ANS Alexander Blake (Alliance planetary assault ship)
  • ISS Temujin (Empire battleship)

• Tramp freighter
  • Painted Lady
  • Corazon
  • Sparrow

• Cargo Liner

• Passenger Liner
  • Éclipse Lunaire

• Explorer/Surveyor
  • IES (Imperial Exploratory Service) Ludwig Salvator
  • SFS (Sokolov Foundation) Magalhães
  • ASCS (Alliance Survey Corps) Zheng He

Names from multiple languages and cultural backgrounds would definitely be a plus (one of the major human factions, the Alliance, unites some very strange bedfellows and even the politically monolithic Empire has considerable cultural diversity).

So...any more decent ideas?

I can offer the use of a couple of ships I've used in my SW games.

One was a tugship outfitted for deep-space salvage, named the Vulture. Eventually, the owner expanded into a small fleet, and added the Buzzard, the Condor, and a supply ship called the Bottom Feeder.

Another was a small military-grade scoutship "owned" by a roving Jedi with the Explorer Corps. Jedi aren't supposed to form sentimental attachments to "things," but spacers consider it unlucky for a ship to be without a name. So she christened it the Atob - as in, it gets her from A to B.

• Rough-N-Tumble
• Three Dogs Barking
• Lying Bastard
• Black Thumb
• Shining Light
• Koseegan
• Karaboudjan
• Merrinim
• Kaylie
• Hatchet

Alternatively, you could just use the names of actual, real-world naval ships (link). Alternatively alternatively, you could use the names of racehorses (link) which tend to follow similar lines.

EDIT: There's also this, that I found after 5 seconds' Googling. Not sure what it's a list of, exactly, but there's plenty of names to choose from.

edited 24th Dec '15 2:35:30 AM by Tungsten74

Half of those are probably pure camp, but there you go:

• The Graceful Butterfly (tramp freighter)
• ISS Invictus (Empire warship)
• ISS Carcharodon (Empire warship)
• Empress <name> (passenger liner, in the "Queen Elizabeth" etc. tradition)
• Ruhr (cargo liner)
• ISS Fist Of The Empire (Empire warship, duh)
• ANS Sobieski (Alliance warship)
• ANS Batory (Alliance warship)
• ANS/ISS Novy Krakov (warship)
• Rusalka (cargo freighter)
• SFS/IES/ASCS Copernicus (exploratory, and if you want more "international" flavour, maybe Kopernik, man's native pronounciation of the surname)
• ANS Samurai (Alliance warship)
• ISS Vorpal Blade (Empire warship)
• SFS/IES/ASCS Wanderer (exploratory)
• White Rabbit (passenger)
• Bella Maria (cargo)

Generally, for batch-naming of stuff like warships, you could invent entire classes, like Warrior, King or City, and go with the theme for all the warships of this kind (eg. all Warriors have names like Samurai, Cataphract, Templar etc, and all Kings are named after famous Terran rulers). As an added bonus, it would be enough for you to describe their look once and your players could figure out what you're talking about based on name alone.

I'm using that kind of theme naming, and judging by your avatar you got the idea in the same place I did :P.

The ISS Cannae, for example, has sister ships called Thermopylae, Marathon and Issos (all classical-age battles).

Here's a few others I found:

Smuggler:

• The Risky Business
• The Bad Penny

Cargo Liner:

• The Muddling Through

Uncategorized:

• The Irresistible Force (could be a good name for an Imperial warship, or a Jedi/Sith's ride.)
• The Blast Radius (As in, everybody should get out of its way when there's trouble.)

• ANS Shimakaze
• ISS Troy
• Frieghter Winds of Fortune
• Smuggler Innocently Deceptive
• Explorer Trailblazer
• Explorer Pathfinder
• Liner Star Queen
• ANS Damocles
• ISS Melbourne
• ANS Distant Memory

Not sure I've got the theme naming down, but I tend to use names with a tad less... gravitas, myself.

Oi, the Lacking Gravitas is my ship

Easy Five

Nina Nine

Single Deuce

Ballerina Joe

Moosehead Puppy

Frontline Winner

Midnight Boxcar(s)

Passline Payout

Whirlworld Seven

Martingale Straight

Bonesroller Longcoat

(I'm really just mining the wiki page for craps. It's kinda fun to find new names this way.)

My favorite is the HMS Metal Shinyass.

edited 29th Dec '15 2:16:31 PM by DeusDenuo

If you're looking for names, and want them to be neutral, try gemstones, or capital cities, or mythical heroes, or chief gods, etc. It might also help to try to match the ship class's names to its type, so weapons, warriors and battles for warships, famous explorers for exploration vessels, alcoholic beverages for replenishment vessels etc.

edited 29th Dec '15 11:03:31 PM by MattII

Freighter ships Old Scotch and Vodka? That'd be fun to encounter, though one might question the reasoning behind owner's decision...

Not freighters, but replenishment vessels, like the Henry J Kaiser or Supply class vessels in the current US inventory. Also, that group can be further subdivided (a result of the very human ambition, throughtout history, to get permanent sozzled) into at least 4 groups depending on what goes into them (grain, fruit, vegetable and 'other').

As to why those names in particular, call it a bit of humour, as the names would be a reminder of the great desire (and utter inability) of the crewbeings to acquire alcohol.

edited 30th Dec '15 1:01:02 AM by MattII

Ah, I see, my nomenclature-fu is lacking. I like the idea, though.

Well, I do know that there's a whole group of sailing yachts (all belonging to the same outfit that rents them out) named after various brands of liquor hanging around the caribbean these days, so the freighter "Johnnie Walker" is definitely an option :P.

A lot of great suggestions so far, list is coming along nicely.

Oh I wasn't think of brands of beer (or other beverages), but of names of actual drinks, picked off this list. of course, denizens on the middle-east might feel left out (the whole no-alcohol thing), but I don't think anyone else would, there being plenty of names for all the other continents.

edited 30th Dec '15 1:02:53 PM by MattII