In EVE Online, do you name your ships?
I ask because it seems to be a somewhat introverted thing to do in EVE.
A ship’s name is not emblazoned along the bow or across the stern.
In fact, by default, nobody else can see the name of your ship in their overview or in the main screen. Somebody has to dig up the information screen about your ship to see its name.
It is likely you could fly for days, weeks, or months without anybody bothering to peek at your info and see the name of your vessel.
It seems perfectly sane, reasonable, and logical to not bother thinking up a name for your ship, since you might be the only one ever to see that name.
Yet I name every single ship I fly, from shuttles to battleships.
My Raven battleships were named Walter Brennan (because the Raven has a gimpy wing) and Nevermore.
My Drakes have been named Smokin’ Doorstop, Wedge This!, and Wrecking Bar.
My haulers have had names like Twilight M&S and Twilight Party Supply.
My Hulk is named Clobberin’ Time in memory of a comic book obsessed roommate I had in college who I used to annoy no end by attributing incorrect tag lines to super heroes. (Yes Mike, I knew that was the line for The Thing every single time I attributed it to The Hulk.)
And even shuttles get named things like Rust Mite (Minmatar), Anal Probe (Amarr), or Spoon Trek.
In fact, the first three steps with me for any new ship are:
- Assemble ship
- Enter ship
- Name ship
After that I work on equipment.
But, as it has been pointed out on more than one occasion, I am a bit obsessive about some details, like names. So I was wondering, does anybody else name their ships?
And, if you name them, what are some of your better, most fitting, or most amusing names?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
Oh hell yes. In fact, I have naming conventions for ships. Frigates are Colorado “fourteener” mountains; cruisers are Earth rivers; battlecruisers are geographic features of Mars; industrials all are some reference to “Brick.” Hence frigates like Longs Peak and Crestone, cruisers like Rio Grande, Cimarron, and Euphrates, and battlecruisers like Mons Olympus and Syria Planum.
Lexx tends to use anime and movie references in her ship names; Selena calls all of hers “Mystic,” such as Mystic Destruction, Mystic Eagle, and Mystic Executioner.
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I generally tend to. Back when I was a (not so successful) pirate, I tended to change the names quite a bit and I usually went with certain themes. Firstly, I went with all names being ‘USS’ followed by the name. Then I gave them a Japanese theme, and I never really moved from that.
Now that I’m mining or ratting more than anything though, I have no need to name them really.
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Excellent! That is exactly the sort of behavior that make me feel better about my own! Mania loves company!
I have not yet owned enough ships to start thinking of differentiating them by class and coming up with a regular naming convention… hrmm….
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I don’t do that in EVE since I do not play it, but that was certainly something I have done in other MMOs with ships in them (e.g. Earth & Beyond).
Generally I used named from or inspired by Culture ship names from novels by Iain M. Banks.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~mjhuur1/projects/banks/ships.html
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Ship names appear in the on board scanner results. If you don’t change your ship name, you provide valuable intel to anyone that might be hunting you. They’ll know what ship you have by its’ default name (eg. “Black Claw’s Ishkur”), and can make the decision to come after you with a ship designed to counter yours, or ignore you.
Eve Online is one huge game of “Rock, Scissors, Paper”… if you tell people you have Paper, they’ll bring Scissors to cut you up. :)
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I named all mine after my cat.
Isis’ Dark Laughter
Isis in Shadow
Isis’ Silent Kiss
Isis’ Dark Laughter II
… were the ones I wrote of on my blog :P
I totally agree. Naming your ship is important!
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Oh, and being an Aussie, I prefix all my uniquely chosen ship names with HMAS, which is the standard Australian Navy prefix (Her Majesty’s Australian Ship).
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I always Name My Ships!
My Retriever’s called “Golden”
My Anthema’s called “Dark Star” (because it Cloaks)
I have a Bestower called “There and Back again”
I found a Sigil Once 20km of a High sec Gate Podless and Empty, I hopped in and Named it “Finder’s Keeper’s” and still fly it around.
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My ships are mostly named after United States ships of similar class or purpose. So USS Texas BB 35 is in my fleet, as is USS Aires PHM 5 and USS Alaska CB 1.
I did stray from that convention to name my Hulks (USS Bruce Banner & USS David Banner) for reasons that should be obvious. ;)
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My Imicus drone frigate was so beautiful and shiny that I named it Mojo Glitter. I think it is always fun to come up with names for ships, though I haven’t named any shuttles yet…
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I only really name my favorites. I named a couple of early ones after my wife (Ashley Jean).
Now, I name them more as a joke. My frigate is the “Not So Deadly”. Another was “Cannon Fodder”. Shuttles have been named from “There and Back” to “Crotch Rocket” (after the mini bikes popular in my neighborhood for a while).
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What Black Claw said. Also a reason to avoid the obvious names that mean or hint at Hulk (or whatever) like Hulk Smash or Hulk Hogan…something that is an obvious tipoff to someone looking to bring you down.
I used to name ships after Wing Commander ones, dralthi, jalthi, etc… or TCS whatever…then did some WWII crafts…but lately I just call them all Pleepleus so that I’m never drinking alone out there.
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What Black Claw said. It is occasionally worth renaming your ship to another player in system’s or fly a Muninn and name it Debes Sparre’s Rupture. People in a hurry with the scanner will often miss that.
My ruptures are named Scindere in Aeternum, my muninn are Memoria in Aeternum, and as to my frigates..someone will have to scan me down and find out.. :)
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I actually name most of my ships Veldspar. It helps you blend in on the scanner if someones hunting you and at the end of the day all it really is is Veldspar thats been shinied up a bit.
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I dont have a ship, but if I did, I’d name it “The Rap Up” !!
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Hell, I even have plans for ship classes I can’t fly yet. So, when I do get my first Obelisk, it’ll be the Tuomas Holopainen (Freighters = members of Nightwish).
A couple of ships I have break with convention. My Dramiel (courtesy of Lexx) is Firefox…and to use the weapons, you must think in Russian. :-) And my Apotheosis shuttle (unlike my other shuttles, which get names from shuttlecraft from Star Trek and Star Wars) is Grey Ghost. (Lexx called hers Apollo 13.)
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Oh of course you have to name your ships!
I used to have this running joke with an old tabletop group that I was the captain of the Invincible II. Anyone who dared ask about the Invincible I was guaranteed to get a fight (much to our GM’s perpetual dismay).
Current favorites in Eve:
Indefatigable
Rising Enterprise
City of Industry
Insatiable
Twilight Drayage
Twilight Heavy Haul
Aardvark
and of course, my Cormorant the Pass the Linseed Oil.
Polar exploration ships are always a favorite, any ship from the fighting age of sail, and the occasional ship from Silent Running…
Haven’t really adopted much of a convention other than conspicuously inauspicious names for noncombat ships (e.g. City of Industry).
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Absolutely. I can’t disagree with any of these.
I generally rename most of my ships with pop cultural references. The mining ships tend to be people/actors. One of my Hulks is named “Lou Ferrigno”. The Mackinaw is “Bobby Drake”.
For cruisers I tend to go with musicians. I have an Osprey named “Offspring” and the Caracal is the “Josie and the PCs”. The veritable Vexor got named “They Might Be Giants”.
For battlecruisers I don’t know what you would call it. I guess they are all punctuated. My Drake is “.” and my Ferox is “ƒ” while the Myrmidon is “µ” and the Brutix ended up being “∆”.
I don’t have anything for BS’s yet as I don’t fly them yet. My industrials all have hotel names, “Movenpic”, “Raddison”, “Intercon” and “Mercure” and the freighter is just simply named “Bigger Than”.
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Most of mine take names from Zander Nyrond’s “Slow Way” filk; others take names from their types (like my Mammoths tend to get pachydermal names).
I do like the idea of using non-alphabetical symbols — once I’ve run out of Slow Way I’ll try it.
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I pick a fresh naming system every time I go away and come back to EVE. Previously, I’ve used David Bowie Singles, London Underground Stations, and most recently track names of the fine Electric Light Orchestra!
When skulking about, as explained by Black Claw above, I go with ‘Hammerhead I’, which probably doesn’t help, but might just slow them down a bit! :)
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Excellent ideas above, talk of naming conventions makes a lot of sense (in a terribly geeky way) and i may have to adopt it now my ship roster is getting big (never sell a ship you have used. NEVER!)
My Battleships have names to impress the foe, “Furious Vengeance”, “Relentless Endeavour”, “Indomitable Will”, etc.
My Blockade running Crane is the “Speedy Postman”. My salvaging Hurricane is the “Fisher of wrecks”.
I like the idea of the london underground stations. I’ll terrify the Sansha devils with the Paddington, Piccadilly and the fearsome St James Park!
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Yes i do name em and I beg to differ with one small point. When you hit your system scanner you see the ship names….that does come into play. I name mine after USN ships of a similar class ( for drone boats I use the carrier names or the helocpaoter carrier names)
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I have seen, whilst scanning in low-sec, a ship named ‘Asteroid (Veldspar)’, and other variations designed to fool the less alert pilots.
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One of my favorite names if The Bleeding Rose. Sounds like a good pirate ship name. Sometimes I use slightly descriptive names for that ships role, such as Reaching Hand for a sniper ship or Doomy Sloth for my heavy interdictor.
Naming a ship just adds to the immersion factor for me.
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Yep – helps slow down any scanner
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Right now:
Hurricane = CTF Hyboria
Stabber = CTF Lawn Dart
Mammoth = CTF Convoy
I name them all.
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“Not the ship youre looking for move along”
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I name EVERY ship!! Sometimes based on the ship type, sometimes after people, sometimes just to be obnoxious, sometimes according to a theme selected for a given roam. Some examples (yeah, I use the ♥ symbol in the names):
Reaper = ♥ Snapper
Rifter = ♥ Stinger
Jaguar = ♥ Pounce
Wolf = Howling Orgasm
Rupture = ♥ Riveted, Make It Big (that was for a WHAM! themed roam)
Stabber = ♥ Dizzy
Fleet Issue Stabber = ♥ Angient (player who gifted it to me)
Cynabal = Digitalicious, Rocalicious (for Roc Wieler), ♥ Sinful
Hurricane = Stormfront, Downpour, Thunderhead, Cloudburst
Tempest = Eat My Rust
Claw = Scratchatchu
Stiletto = Sharp or Six Inch
Shuttles = Zoom, Don’t Tase Me Bro, CYA
My Gallente PVP alt named all his ships after porn stars long before I became responsible for his management. I think I’ll keep them that way; it makes me laugh. Especially the Deimos named Ron Jeremy. I see some pretty raunchy ship names in Low Sec; they might offend some, but I find the clever ones amusing.
For larger fleet combat situations, I have named ships “ZZZZZZ” or similar. Many FCs tell their fleet members to sort alphabetical by Name so that primary/secondary can be more quickly located when there are a lot of hostiles on the overview. This puts my ship at the bottom of the list and hopefully makes it less noticeable.
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Oh, naming ships is an art! For me, it has to be funny, nice, and related to the stuff it will do…
Not a Jump Clone (any shuttle)
Blahnik (Stiletto)
Tranq Dart (Sentinel – will put you to sleep)
Voodoo Doll (Keres – dampens your mood)
A Wing and a Prayer (Executioner racer – fragile!)
Devil Cricket (Daredevil – looks like a mean bug)
Poison Apple (Malediction, who’s the fastest of them all? muahaha)
Evil Quin (my Nemesis, bomber)
The Quin Bee (Vexor)
I mostly fly small stuff but, gosh do these have personality :)
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Lets face it, this is just a sad excuse for putting anal probe into a post to raise the hit rate. Cleaver bastard you.
And yea, I name most ships, although not shuttles. (I toss those away too often)
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You missed the subtle point Syncaine. Walter Brennan + Anal Probe = gay cowboy side-kick demographic. I’ll be raking in the page views from those Google search terms now.
Either that, or all the words in bold face in the post can be arranged to spell out a message the space overlords who will soon rule earth. Take your pick.
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I named my Bestower – the Ammarian Industrial – “Bus Magic Bus” in memory of The Who and it..uhhh… looks like a big honkin’ bus.
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When I could finally fly my first BC, I felt the naming convention was obvious… Katrina. Big Hurricane that killed lots of people. My corp mates gave me some grief for it, but I found it amusing at the time. Of course Katrina went down to a gate camp, so Katrina 2 was born. That one went down at a station in Losec… so Katrina 3. And 4. And 5, and 6.
When I started flying one out in 0.0, I switched gears… Isabelle! and 2, and 3, and 4…
Shuttles – Bzzt, Meep Meep, etc.
Frigs – Zap
Stabbers – Big Zap
Hulks – Smash
Haulers – Tonka
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I name ’em all except for shuttles. I got quite a few ships – at first I was naming them what I thought they looked like:
Rubber Chicken – Scythe
Inchworm – Osprey
Rust Bucket – Hoarder
Ugly Stick – Thrasher
Salad Tongs – Coercer
And then some by function, or obscure Pop-Culture:
Custodial Cutter – Cormorant (salvaging destroyer)
Binge-N-Purge – (Retriever/Hulk)
Emancipator – Hurricane (The Emancipator was a “captured” Star Destroyer in the Star Wars universe)
Pooper Scooper – Catalyst (salvaging destroyer)
Dronicus Prime – Myrmidon and they look like a transformer anyways :D
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I name most of my ships.
My BS are called Biliskner (+ Roman numeral of incarnation) or HAL (+ roman numeral).
My Indy is called Indian + (roman incarnation or active number).
Most other ships carry a name associated with their function, somehow. :)
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My frigates and assault ships are named Ripsack
My Cruisers are Bloodnut
My recon ships are Blue vein
My destroyers are Kidney Stone
My command ships are Tribal Vengeance
I think I may be disturbed.
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Naming ships .. definately, just so I can remember how many of the type I lost.
I usually go for a functional name, or visual association (I used to have all my punishers named “Dolphin” back in the day. Bestowers space slug.) And then I, II, III up to XVI now for buzzards.
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Always. Sometimes with a musical flavor (from tunes or bands), sometimes from other video games I’ve played, and more. Examples:
T1 fit Rifter: Cheapniz (Zappa inspired)
T2 fit Rifter: Scrag (Quake inspired)
Jihad Stabber: Allah’s Falafel
Ratting Hurricane: Blizzard (I’m a Montrealer)
Regular Stiletto: 312 T4 (Gilles Villeneuve’s 1979 Ferrari)
Rigged Claw: Nerf Me (get it?)
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I really only name my favourites. Angels Fear to Tread is my main battleship and she goes where they would at least think twice before heading in.
And I have to say she’s always managed to get out. Singed around the edges to be sure, but she’s always managed to get me home :)
Mosquito is my Ishkur
Fragments of Reality was my Vexor (long live the Vex!)
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I name ships because if you dont name them, people using the scanner can know who and what ship is using! So people can take more guesses about you and maybe give you a advantage.
Also I used to name my ships in letters, for example: L-SRMF II
That mean Long-Short Range Mother F***** II (II means that its my second ship named like that so that means that I lost the L-SRMF I)
Now I name them with names of songs like Eagleheart I, Infinity I, etc (those are Stratovarius songs).
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If the ship is considered expendable, I don’t name it. But when I do name ships, I tend to stick to a theme. For example, my last 3 Drakes were called the Trader’s Folly, the Gambler’s Compulsion and the Victim’s Guilt. There’s the blockade runner named Silent Whisper, and my Hulk’s called the Beautiful Erasure. It’s named after a certain brainwashing level in R-Type Final, because mining also tends to suppress thinking. ;-)
While tend to avoid obvious associations with any ship that might see combat, my industrials are an exception: The Middleman, the Invisible Hand, the Overseer..
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I always named my Ships like “Char name´s Caldari Shuttle” and always loved to imagine the faces of some wannabe-pirates jumping to me and staring down the barrels of my nightmare ^^
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“Acura Thorax Type S”
“Honda Hyperion Si”
But after reading about the scanner popping up the name… I’ll have to start naming them Veldspar, or name it rock while I’m really flying scissors, so when they bring paper… >=]
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I name many of my ships.
Some after authors….a thorax named “The Philip K. Dick”, a Celestis named “The Jack Vance”, an Exchequer named “The Andre Norton” and so on but some according to their uses, a punisher fitted to run into lowsec “Road Runner”, just a habit and helps to connect to ship and ships purpose.
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This comment may seem 8 months late lol but I love to name my ships. It feels like they have a unique identity to them and makes you want to strive to keep them and not pop them. This is how I tend to name my ships by class:
Shuttles – Greek Heroes
Frigates – Earth Geographical Landmarks
Destroyers – Earth Rivers
Cruisers – Major Cities (Modern and Ancient)
Battle Cruisers – US Naval Ships
Battleships – Greek Deities
Faction Battleships – Space Shuttles, sense there are only 6 space shuttle names and faction ships are a little more expensive I usually only own 1 or 2 at a time and cycle through them in the order the space shuttles were built (Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor)
Should I ever fly capitals they would be named as such:
Carriers – US Carriers
Super carriers (MOMS) – Norse Deities
Dreadnoughts – Lunar Sites
Titans – Greek Titan Names
Sense I live in the USA I give my ships a USS prefix and in the event I cycle through names and must repeat one I add a letter to its end example: “A” “B” “C” “D”… Ive been debating to add the corp ticker as a prefix to a registry number and the number would be the actual year + number in sequence for example first ship of 2010 would be 1001 had it been in 09 it would have been 901.
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Yep. And there’s one other group of people who CAN appreciate ship names – hostiles. Haha
I once got a ship of mine named ‘Flying Orphanage’ blown up by a gate camp. It was an experimental fit of a minmatar Rupture, very expensive (for my five month old character), and was an inside joke from our alliance on how drones were actually piloted by crippled orphans. :P One of the guys who killed it messaged me later because he got the joke, imagine that!
My other ships are all variations of my ingame name. Favorite names for my small scouting cloakie ships was ‘Obsidian Butterfly’, ‘Obsidian Shard’ for my hurricane, ‘Obsidian Hammer’ for my beloved Maelstrom.
However, on skirmish fleets with my corp/alliance, I tend to rename my ships to be misleading. Asteroid(Veldspar) being the favorite, but I have used everything from naming my rifter after the nearest stargate I was scouting, to naming my fleet-fitted Tempest after Titans. :P Works best when I’m alone and scouting for the main fleet behind me, as it takes a but for people to recognize that the extra Asteroid(Veldspar) on their HUD was actually a cloaked Cheetah. XD And then it’s often too late.
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Oh, and one other thing I’m fond of doing: ejecting canisters randomly and naming them something random and humorous.
Examples:
1) Flying to an asteroid belt with a sizable population carebear miners chewing on it and leaving a ‘SAVE THE ASTEROIDS, KILL A MINER’ message on a can.
2) Undocking from a station. ‘WARNING: This station has been infected with an unknown alien entity, docking is not advised.’
3) Ejecting cargo around a stargate on a small camp in an attempt to add more objects that could decloak an incoming ship faster and naming them ‘DECLOAKING DEVICE II’
4) Simply randomly ejecting ammo around stargates I just jumped through and naming them things like ‘The Cake is a Lie’, etc. etc.
None of them are malicious, and I see quite a lot of people doing it. And it’s fun. :)
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