Indian Navy Ship Names
By 1948 a general policy was formulated for naming ships and craft that were being acquired. According to this policy the names to be chosen were, as a rule, to be of Indian origin and the choice of names was to be based on three considerations - functional, historical and geographical. The functional names would express the function of the ship in naval warfare, the historical names would perpetuate names from India's maritime history and the geographical names would commemorate such Indian geographical features as rivers, mountains and capital cities. Uniformity of nomenclature was to be ensured for each class of ships.
The light fleet carriers were to be named after mountains or peaks such as Vindhya, Vikrant, Satpura and Gauri Shankar; cruisers were to be named after the national capital or the capital cities of our principal maritime states, such as Delhi, Mysore, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras; destroyers were to be named in such a manner that members of each flotilla or squadron would have the same initials,such as Rajput, Rana, and Ranjit or Ganga, Gomati and Godavari; antiaircraft frigates were to be named after rivers such as Jumna, Sutlej, Cauvery (earlier spelling of Kaveri) and Kistna (earlier spelling of Krishna); antisubmarine frigates were to be named after Indian weapons such as Khukri, Kirpan, Kuthar, Tahoar and Trishul.
Submarines were to be named after the various species of fish such as Husa and Matsya; minesweepers were to be named after states such as Bengal, Bombay and Madras (earlier name of Tamil Nadu); major landing craft were to be named after ferocious predatory animals, reptiles and birds such as Magar, and miscellaneous craft were to have appropriate functional names, such as Shakti for a tanker, Dharini for a stores carrier and Bathi, for a tug.
