One of my hobbyhorses, which I have generally tried not to go on about here, is the proper naming of ships. Unfortunately, the recent activities of now-former Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, who used his last few days in office to go on a naming binge, have forced my hand.
Names for USN ships are selected by the Secretary of the Navy,1 but for a long time, the traditional naming scheme was more or less adhered to. Specifically, battleships were to be named after states (a requirement that was only removed in 2023) while cruisers were named for cities, destroyers for naval heroes and carriers after ships from the early American Navy, and later for battles, while submarines were named for fish. This began to break down after WWII, the first obvious breach being the carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt, named after the recently-deceased president.2 This was the beginning of an interleaved set of "great person" names for the carriers, with Forrestal and John F. Kennedy popping up in the 50s and 60s before the naming scheme switched fully with the Nimitz class. At the same time, the submarine scheme began to switch from fish to, first, "Congressional supporters of the Navy's nuclear program" and then to cities, as, according to Admiral Rickover, "fish don't vote".
The floodgates of bad names have opened in the 21st century, as political pandering has become increasingly common in naming.3 First, there was the breaking of the taboo against naming ships after living people, which started with the Carl Vinson in 1974. This was followed in the late 20th century by Hyman G. Rickover, John C. Stennis, Arleigh Burke, Ronald Reagan,4 Bob Hope and Jimmy Carter. Now, I don't particularly dislike any of these names except on the grounds that the namesake was alive. Pretty much all of them are important people to the history of the country or the USN, and probably should have gotten ships at some point. But this trend has continued to accelerate, to the point that the list of names for the 2020s is longer than that for the 2010s, even though we're only halfway through the decade. But the names have also gotten worse. John Warner got a submarine days after retiring from the Senate by a departing SecNav, while George W. Bush named a carrier for his dad.5 Gabrielle Giffords was given an LCS for being shot and surviving, despite a complete lack of connection to the US military.6 John Lewis and Carl Levin both got ships essentially as retirement presents. And Del Toro just announced that CVNs 82 and 83 will be named after Bill Clinton and George W. Bush respectively. About the only good thing was the display of bipartisanship. Otherwise, both men are too recent and too controversial to make good namesakes, and there's already a carrier named George H.W. Bush, which is just going to make things confusing when CVN-77 and CVN-83 are both in service at the same time. Even worse, he named a DDG after Mabus, which is very close to Giffords for my "worst name" trophy, given that Mabus is alive and his impact on the USN is not viewed positively.
Nor has this been the only damage to the naming scheme. Obviously, several of the traditional categories (battleships and cruisers) have gone away, and the result has been total chaos. In 2020, SecNav Braithewait named CVN-81 after Doris Miller, a very worthy namesake for a destroyer but a complete departure from any previous carrier name. Del Toro's recent announcements include Intrepid, a traditional carrier name and not a person of any sort, for a Burke, while naming a Constellation after Joy Bright Hancock, an important figure in the history of the Navy nurse corps. Flipping these makes much more sense, but would require a modicum of self-respect on Del Toro's part. Oh, and he also named the third of the new SSBNs Groton, which is completely in violation of all conventions, to the point where I suspect he's either trolling me or I'm trapped in a Duffelblog article.
More broadly, there's the question of what the point of a ship's name is, and I think a lot of people miss that this is fundamentally a more important question than it is for, say, a post office. A warship is a community, and should bear a name that is impressive and helpful in shaping its culture, and a name that we are not likely to be embarrassed by decades down the line.7 If the Captain of the USS George Washington needs to give a speech drawing on his ship's namesake, this is easy enough, but I don't envy the captain of the USS William J Clinton that same task. More than that, names can create longer-term connections which are even more helpful in building these traditions. When I read about the exploits of USS Iowa (BB-4) at Santiago, I felt a kinship with the crew, even though they all died before I was born. And the crew of the soon-to-commission SSN-797 carry on that lineage. As a result, we should be in favor of maintaining, as far as possible, those names which carry impressive battle honors over those which are simply politically expedient. Obviously, we will have new heroes, but names like Enterprise, Hoel and Barb8 should be maintained in service to give their new crews something to live up to.
Obviously, we are due a new SecNav, John Phelan, who completely lacks any apparent naval background. What he will do is unclear, but I hope for the best, and I will note that the traditional prohibition on renaming ships does not apply to vessels which have not yet been christened. In any case, this has clearly gotten out of hand, and I wrote this at least in part as a call for Congress to take action on the issue. My proposals:
1. No ship to be named after any living person.
2. No ship to be named after any person who has been in the Presidency, Vice-Presidency, Congress or any office subject to Senate confirmation within the last 25 years.9
3. Specify what categories get what names, so we can skip the current mess. I'd recommend these be as traditional as possible (destroyers get naval heroes, submarines get fish/old submarines, carriers get traditional carrier names, etc) but I mostly want the ability of the Secretary of the Navy to pander to whoever shows up to be restricted by law, because things are getting out of hand.
That said, if I was to somehow end up as SecNav, I would be very tempted to violate these rules by commissioning a sewage barge and naming it after Carlos del Toro.
If you want to learn more about this, there's an interesting CRS report on ship naming, which includes an argument from someone in the Navy that "important political leaders" are a separate naming scheme threaded across various classes. I plan to use that if I ever need an emetic.
1 Weirdly, this used to be clearly established in law, but that requirement was deleted in 1925, and he continues on basically out of tradition. ⇑
2 Originally, CV-42 was going to be Coral Sea, a name reassigned to CV-43. It appears that CV-43 was unnamed before this. ⇑
3 To be clear, this is absolutely a bipartisan issue, and I've done my best to train my fire on SecNavs of both parties. I am not interested in having a discussion of who has done worse in the comments. ⇑
4 Reagan was named in 1994, only 6 years after her namesake left office. ⇑
5 In fairness, George H.W. Bush was a carrier aviator with an impressive war record. ⇑
6 This is the only name I've complained about here before, and I find it particularly offensive. While what happened to her is obviously tragic, the simple fact is that she survived being shot and there are lots of people who volunteered to put on the uniforms of the sea services who did not, and thus in my view straightforwardly deserve ships more. Ray Mabus should be ashamed of himself for this. ⇑
7 See, for instance, the recent renaming of Maury and Chancellorsville due to Confederate ties, to say nothing of ships like Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson, both Polaris missile boats. ⇑
8 Two of these are used for ships on order. That said, there were jokes that naming CVN-79 Enterprise was the only reason Mabus dared show his face in Norfolk. But I was genuinely glad when Braithwait used Barb. Shame about Miller. But these were mostly picked to be particularly clear-cut, and there are quite a few others. ⇑
9 If the person is important enough to deserve a ship, they will still be important enough in a quarter-century. ⇑
Comments
Not good spelling.
Ships are inanimate objects.
No longer having battleships and maybe not ever making new ships classified as cruisers means states and cities are available for something else.
Typo is fixed.
The feminine pronoun is standard for ships in English. (There's a surprisingly strong correlation between a language's use of the feminine pronoun for ships and success at sea.)
De facto, states go to submarines now. I'm not entirely sure what to do with cities, unless we start building cruisers again, because all of the other slots are more or less taken.
The British ships named after monarchs used un-numbered "HMS Royal James" in the age of sail, switched to numbered "HMS King Edward VII" in the battleship era, and stopped at the point it would have given them a King George V and VI at the same time, but I don't know if any of this was an attempt to avoid confusingly similar names.
Amusing coincidence, found while looking for this in relation to
Hear hear! I care more about consistency than the exact standard. If I was SecNav, this is what I would do:
Carriers - Famous Presidents 50 years ago and before. We have plenty of great presidents in our history (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc etc) - just keep using them Submarines - States. We have a lotta great states and a lotta naval history in them.
Cruisers - Great Naval Battles. We have a ton of these. (And yes, I would keep building cruisers) Destroyers - Great Naval Heros. We have a ton of these. Frigates/LCS - Cities. We have a lot here.
Consistent and already using some of these.
Another typo, the "is" should be "was".
Other people can be wrong of they want, and will suffer appropriate consequences. I've been writing using feminine pronouns since the beginning, and will continue to do so.
Bill Clinton is a really bad name beyond being recent because a) even among presidents, he really doesn't have the kind of "successful military leader" quality that generally seems to work (ie even if they didn't serve, they were a war-time President: GWB kind of works here), and b) uh there's the whole sex scandal (as I joked on Twitter, imagine being the Command Sexual Assault Prevention and Response coordinator onboard that ship), which is supposed to be a very big deal in the Navy.
Another very weird thing is Del Toro's naming ships that aren't even on order, and we won't be cutting steel for a while. It's like DT was filling out his journal of accomplishments while he was in office and realized it was empty so he rushed in a bunch of things late.
Also, I think I've noted this before, but given the obsession with giving names to important members of The Groups, it's weird we haven't named a ship after Horacio Rivero (kinda the first Hispanic 4-star admiral, and also pretty instrumental in development of the VT fuses!).
I was perhaps less negative towards certain names in the post than I actually feel towards them to keep things from becoming overly political/partisan.
My best guess is that Del Toro wanted to try and block Phelan from naming things because he was afraid of what names Phelan might pick, but I have no evidence for this, and no insight into what sort of names Phelan might pick. I do promise a blistering follow-up if he turns out to be worse.
The Marines (unsurprisingly?) seem to get this, at least judging by the naming of the LHAs and most of the LPDs. (John Murtha excepted)
Those are also named by SecNav, unfortunately. Murtha is a little bit better than Lewis or Levine, in that he was actually a Marine for a long time, and was dead before they named the ship after him. (That said, there's a reason for rule 2, and it's to stop this kind of nonsense.)
I had the idea of developing a naming scheme based on enumerated constitutional rights. The problem is that this leads to some awkward, unwieldy names like “USS Free Exercise of Religion”. Although I think “USS Speedy Trial” is a great name.
"Virtue naming" ships was a thing in at least the French Revolution (and probably some other eras I don't know of). Unfortunately, it has a tendency to lead to headlines such as "1797 Jan 13: Human Rights sunk by two British frigates". (Droits de l'Homme, and somewhat overstated)
@ bean: for the "casuals" such as me, would you explain the sewage barge thing? Did the guy personally contribute to some of the USN submissions for the William D Brown Memorial Award, or something?
He's the SecNav I just spent like half the post complaining about. If he wants to give a bunch of ships bad names, I feel like turnabout is fair play.
100% agree with what your saying here. Gifford getting a ship was an abomination. But I actually think Clinton is worse when you consider the enormous damage he did to the Navy and in particular the naval infrastructure. Damage that the Navy is still suffering from today. Not to mention that the man was a draft dodger and he and his wife hated the military.
No more naming ships after politicians period.
Not to mention that you want a ships name to inspire her crew. The name has to bring some kind of legacy that is inspirational and worthy of emulation. The crew of the Samuel B Robert’s testified afterwards that they were inspired to save their ship by the legacy of its predecessor and its sailors. If the future Dorris Miller gets hit that name will provide a legacy that inspires. The Clinton? Yeah no.
While not solely a naval tradition, the use of "she" to describe an inanimate object is definately part of English linguistic tradition and I hope long may it continue. It is in no way derogatory and, to a great many listeners, lends a very pleasant lilt to the sentence. It is a very nice touch.
Think of the poor French and Germans, among so many others, who would have to erase a good many terms from their language were they not masculne or feminine.
As far as ship names, I always enjoyed the WW1 and WW2 British names. They had a great grouping of inspiring names.
Ski206:
What damage? Is this just cold war is over, we don't need so many ships or did he do something else?
Neal:
Getting rid of things like that is also part of English linguistic tradition.
English has already gone through it. The fact is that widely spoken languages do get simplified simply by being widely spoken.