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Naming Ships

The CVN-77 George H.W. Bush, comissioned on 10 January 2009, and the SSN-785 John Warner, named on 08 January 2009, are the latest examples of the corruption and decadence of the system for naming US Navy warships.

The procedures and practices involved in Navy ship naming are the products of evolution and tradition, rather than of legislation. In the United States, ships are regarded as female, while Russian ships were considered male. More recently, the US Navy has decided to defer to the Associated Press style guide, and refer to ships as "it" - a practice that may improve the post-service employment opportunities of Navy News Service writers, but that does nothing to instill a sense of tradition in the sea services.

The names for new ships are personally decided by the Secretary of the Navy. Ship name recommendations are conditioned by such factors as the name categories for ship types now being built, as approved by the Secretary of the Navy; the distribution of geographic names of ships of the Fleet; names borne by previous ships which distinguished themselves in service; names recommended by individuals and groups; and names of naval leaders, national figures, and deceased members of the Navy and Marine Corps who have been honored for heroism in war or for extraordinary achievement in peace.

On 17 July 1920 the US Navy went to the modern alpha-numeric numbering system. The US Navy's system of alpha-numeric ship designators and associated hull numbers was for several decades a unique method of categorizing ships of all types: combatants, auxiliaries and district craft. Though considerably expanded over the years, this system remains essentially the same as when formally implemented in 1920. It is a very useful tool for organizing and keeping track of naval vessels, and also provides the basis for the identification numbers painted on the bows of most ships and sometimes on their sterns.

The hull number system's roots extend back to the late 1880s, when ship type serial numbers were assigned to most of the new warships of the emerging "Steel Navy". During the course of the next thirty years, these same numbers were combined with filing codes used by the Navy's clerks to create an informal version of the system that was put in place in 1920. Limited usage of ship numbers goes back even earlier, most notably to the "Jeffersonian Gunboats" of the early 1800s and the "Tinclad" river gunboats of the Civil War Mississippi Squadron.

It is important to understand that hull number letter prefixes are not acronyms, and should not be carelessly treated as abbreviations of ship type classifications. Thus, "DD" does not stand for anything more than "Destroyer". "SS" simply means "Submarine". And "FF", the post-1975 type code for "Frigate", most emphatically is not translated "fast frigate"!.

Starting at the beginning of the 20th Century, the Navy's ships were named in accordance with a system, tailored to ship types. Names of states, for example, were borne by battleships. Cruisers were named for cities while destroyers came to be named for American naval leaders and heroes, as today's destroyers are still named. Starting in 1931 submarines were named for "fish and denizens of the deep." As World War II ship construction programs included new types of ships requiring new name sources; and other classes required a modification of existing name sources to meet a perceived shortage of "appropriate" names. Mass-produced antisubmarine patrol and escort ships were named in honor of members of the naval service killed in action in World War II. Some were named for destroyers lost in the early stages of that war. Ships lost in wartime were normally honored by having their names reassigned to new construction. During World War II the names of individuals were once again assigned to aircraft carriers.

A Confusion of Names

Over time, this system has evolved beyond recognition, due in part to the evolution of modern ships. Today's "destroyers" such the DDG-51 class are nearly as large as the Battleships of the early 20th Century. Although the absence of armor has reduced displacement by a factor of four, a modern "destroyer" is only a few dozen feet shorter than what passed for a capital ship for much of the 20th Century, and modern ships surely make up in firepower, speed, and sensor capabilities what they may lack in raw tonnage. Hence names that may have sufficed for ships of a particular class decades ago may no longer do justice to the magnificence of their current counterparts.

Ships Named After Living Persons

During the Revolutionary period a variety of [mostly minor] vessels were named after George Washington and other outstanding figures of the period. In the 19th Century, the last vessel named after a living person was the USS Harriet Lane, commissioned by the US Revenue Cutter Service in 1857, transferred to the US Navy in 1861, named for Harriet Lane, niece and surrogate First Lady of bachelor President James Buchanan. Lane died in 1903. The first submarine of the US Navy, the Holland (SS-1), was commissioned in 1900 and named after the constructor of the vessel John Philip Holland, who died August 1914. And for 75 years thereafter, no American warship was named after a living person.

The U.S. Postal Service and the members of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC) have set certain basic criteria used in determining the eligibility of subjects for commemoration on all U.S. stamps and stationery. These criteria first were formulated about the time of Postal Reorganization in the early 1970s, and have been refined and expanded gradually since then. No living person shall be honored by portrayal on U.S. postage. Commemorative stamps or postal stationery items honoring individuals usually will be issued on, or in conjunction with significant anniversaries of their birth, but no postal item will be issued sooner than five years after the individual's death. The Committee will not accept or consider proposals for a subject until at least three years after his/her death. The only exception to the five-year rule is the issuance of stamps honoring deceased U.S. presidents. They may be honored with a memorial stamp on the first birth anniversary following death.

H. Robert Campbell, President of the American Numismatic Association, noted in 2000 that "To prevent ... self-aggrandizement and potential deification, the United States established a rule that no living person should be portrayed on a coin of the realm. Even George Washington rejected having his image placed on a coin on the grounds that it smacked of monarchy and was out of place in a republic." No living person has been depicted on a coin of general circulation. To date, four men and one woman have been portrayed on U.S. commemorative coins during their lifetime. Governor T.E. Kilby on the front of the 1921 Alabama Centennial. This is the first time a living person's portrait was used on a U.S. coin. President Calvin Coolidge on the front of the 1926 Sesquicentennial of American Independence. This is the first time a portrait of a president appeared on a coin struck during his lifetime. Senator Carter Glass on the front of the 1936 Lynchburg, Virginia, Sesquicentennial coin. Senator Glass's portrait apparently appeared against his wishes. Senator Joseph T. Robinson on the back of the 1936 Robinson-Arkansas Centennial coin. The only recent aberration was the 1995 Special Olympics commemorative $1 coin, featuring program sponsor Eunice Shriver. To her credit, Mrs. Shriver noted that while she was proud to be portrayed on the coin, she did so to help the very worthy cause of Special Olympics International.

In 1942 Admiral Richmond K. Turner was then sent to the Pacific war zone to take commander of the Amphibious Force, South Pacific Force. Over the next three years, while holding a variety of senior Pacific Fleet amphibious force commands as both a Rear Admiral and Vice Admiral, he planned and executed the conquest of enemy positions in the south, central and western Pacific, contributing greatly to ultimate victory in the World's greatest naval war. In the rank of Admiral, he would have commanded the amphibious component of the invasion of Japan, had that nation not capitulated in mid-1945. He retired from active duty in July 1947. Admiral Richmond K. Turner died in Monterey, California, on 12 February 1961. The guided missile frigate (later cruiser) Richmond K. Turner (DLG-20, later CG-20) was named in honor of Admiral Turner. The keel of the USS RICHMOND K. TURNER was laid on January 9, 1961 by New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, New Jersey, one of nine Leahy-class "double-ended" guided missile destroyers. At that time, it was the practice to name ships after they were laid down, rather than before, so Adm. Turner had died before the ship was named.

While the Navy has attempted to be systematic in naming its ships, in recent years it seems there has been a complete breakdown in any attempt to sustain a systematic practice in the name categories for ship types. The first ship named for a living person in modern times was USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) in 1975.

On 16 April 2004 a new Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer was christened in honor of former Secretary of the Navy Paul H. Nitze. A man of remarkable lifetime achievement, Nitze, who was 97 at the time, was the eighth living person to have a Navy vessel named after him. Nitze died on 19 October 2004, before the ship was commissioned.

The celebration of living ex-Presidents continued when President George W. Bush delivered the principal address at the christening ceremony of the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, CVN-77, named for his father, former President George H. W. Bush, on 07 October 2006 at Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipyard, Newport News, VA. But it has reached a moment of crisis with the naming of CVN-78 Gerald Ford. The first unit of the CVN-68 class was named for Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, the architect of victory at sea against the Japanese in World War II. One of the most accomplished naval leaders of the 20th Century in any country, his name was attached to the most successful aircraft carrier design of all time. The CVN-68 class is now slated to be succeeded by the CVN-78 class. It is difficult to fathom how the US Navy will spend the entire 21st century with the Ford-class aircraft carriers. While there is no doubt that Gerald Ford is a decent man who led the country through a difficult period, his service in public life was generally un-remarkable, and his service since retiring from public life have been extremly unremarkable by the standards established by his successors. During his brief tenure as President, Ford developed a reputation for clumsiness, and was an easy object of derision. While there is something to be said for naming a great ship after someone who was a common sailor during World War II, this is a thin reed indeed.

Badly Named Ships

The lack of discipline in distinguishing between the quick and the dead has been utterly overwhelmed in recently years by the promiscuous distribution of names among various classes of ships. One of the chief benefits of the classical naming system that flourished during the Second World War was the precision with which the name of a ship defined the ship's class, no small matter with a Navy boasting thousands of ships. The elegance of the system in which battleships were named for states, battle-cruisers for territories, large cruisers for large cities and light cruisers for small cities is difficult to exceed. But as the 600-ship Navy has evolved into the 300-ship Navy, it would seem that a presumption has arisen that one should be on a first-name basis with each ship of the fleet, and that no further introductions should be required.

Half a century ago, there would be no doubt that a ship named after a state of the Union was a battleship, whereas today a ship with such a name might be whatever class of ship found favor with the Navy at the moment. This situation has reached absurd proportions with the SSN-21 class, the three units of which are named after a denizen of the deep, a state of the Union, and a President. This problem is not entirely an esthetic one, though the esthetics are difficult to ignore. As the Navy is increasingly called upon to operate in a joint environment, the services' increasingly confusing ship nomenclature will only compound interoperability problems [indeed, one may wonder how many Army and Air Force personnel are aware that there is, in principle, some system by which the Navy names its various ships].

The Need for a Rectification of Names

The present arbitrary ship naming system seems premised on Humpty Dumpty's contention that "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean." What is required now is a "Rectification of Names" - the fundamental Confucian idea that language should always bear the same meaning, that the meaning of words ("Names") should be the same for everyone. That is, words should not mean one thing to older people and another thing to younger people, or that the intention of politicians' statements should be the same as the meaning heard by those listening. Confucius treated "rectifying names" as the key to good government:

Zilu said, ‘The ruler of Wei awaits your taking on administration. What would be master's priority?’
The master replied, ‘Certainly--rectifying names!’ . . . . If names are not rectified then language will not flow. If language does not flow, then affairs cannot be completed. If affairs are not completed, ritual and music will not flourish. If ritual and music do not flourish, punishments and penalties will miss their mark. When punishments and penalties miss their mark, people lack the wherewithal to control hand and foot. Hence a gentleman's words must be acceptable to vocalize and his language must be acceptable as action. A gentleman's language lacks anything that misses--period.(13:3)

Further Chinese elaborations of this doctrine include the prescription of Hsun Tzu written in the Third Century BC:

"Words that have a shallow basis, conduct that does not bear examining, schemes of ill repute _ the gentleman is careful how he approaches these."(Hsun Tzu, Basic Writing, translated by Burton Watson, 1963, p.156).

Absent a wholesale rectification of names, current building rates hold little promise for straightening out this mess any time soon, but a few points for attention seem unavoidable:

• Assign only one type of name to a given class, and assign only that name to that class. The name of a ship should immediately and unambiguously disclose the class of the ship. While it may be too much to hope for the elegant British system in which all ships of a given class begin with the same letter, there should be at least some apparent relationship between what a ship is called and what it does.
• Stop naming ships after living people. Prior to the CVN-70 Carl Vinson the Navy managed to get along just fine for nearly two centuries without naming ships for living individuals, an estimable tradition consistent with the "Dead Presidents" custom that only those who have departed this world may be honored by this world by having their likeness placed on money, stamps and other places of high public honor.
• Ships should have inspirational names. Again, there is probably little hope that the US Navy can match the estimable Royal Navy in this regard [eg, HMS Swiftsure, HMS Revenge, HMS Conqueror, etc]. The launch of the HMS Dreadnought prompted one member of Congress to propose that the American Navy construct the "USS Skeered of Nothing." Those who go down to the sea in ships must take some comfort in the traditions embodied in the Reuben James or The Sullivans. It would seem rather more difficult to find courage in combat from the Bob Hope.

Fortunately, the Lord looks out for fools and the United States of America, and the present situation may at least be on the road to rectification, even if the journey has been vastly lengthened by recent irresponsibility. We seem well along the way towards establishing the precedent that submarines are named after states of the Union, that destroyers are named after distinguished Navy and Marine figures, that aircraft carriers are named for Presidents, and so forth. Within a few decades, perhaps with greater discipline than has been in evidence for the past few decades, the rectification of names will be completed.