I need spaceship names, please.

[FiddleForge]

I'm stockpiling as many names as I can to offer a better lived-in feel for my game universe. I don't want all the ship names to sound like I, alone, came up with them. You fine folks all have varying mindsets so suggest away as long as it isn't explicit. I'm sticking to a PG-13 feel. Feel free to elaborate why a name is awesome and/or it's meaning and origin. I'll even take names for space stations if you've got them. Thank you.

Edit: I should mention that this setting has fantasy races and magic in addition to technology so a wider range of options open up in that sense.

[KorvinStarmast]

Ships:

Starwind
Starwing
Solrunner
Planet Vagrant
Adastra

Space Stations:

Alpha Lem
Chrono Prime
Keppler Prime

[J-H]

Here's a really big list of Royal Navy names:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...the_Royal_Navy
I favor names like the Implacable, Indefatigable, Indomitable, Intrepid, Invincible, etc.
The RN has apparently had over 13,000 ships in service, so you could mine this for a long time if you don't mind a British sound to the names.
You could also run them through a translator program to get the same names in whatever RL (or fantasy like Klingon/Elvish) language you'd like.

Fantasy Name Generators has both a Ship and Spaceship version
https://www.fantasynamegenerators.co...ship-names.php

You could also go with weapon names in various languages.
Nahuatl: Atl-atl, macahuitl, cuahualoli, etc.
Japanese: Katana, bo, naginata, etc.
Chinese: Dao, chu-ko-nu, qiang, etc.

[Anonymouswizard]

Here's a really big list of Royal Navy names:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...the_Royal_Navy
I favor names like the Implacable, Indefatigable, Indomitable, Intrepid, Invincible, etc.
The RN has apparently had over 13,000 ships in service, so you could mine this for a long time if you don't mind a British sound to the names.
You could also run them through a translator program to get the same names in whatever RL (or fantasy like Klingon/Elvish) language you'd like.

Might be worth digging through other naval name records and using different countries for different navies.

For individual ship suggestions:
Thunder Child (yes it's a The War Of The Worlds reference, it's still awesome)
Persephone
Dauntless
Dreadnaught
*Insert mythological monster here*
Gravitas... Gravitas... No don't help me, I'll get it in a moment
Omega

[Kid Jake]

One that I've used a time or two is a horrific destructive warship named The Spirit of Peace and Diplomacy.

So that when they ride up to burn your planet and enslave your people, at least it's in The Spirit of Peace and Diplomacy.

[Bohandas]

I think Seventh Sanctum has a spaceship name generator

[SimonMoon6]

You can always use slightly altered versions of famous fictional spaceships, like the Exit Prize or the Century Bird.

Or name the ships after famous real dead people, like the George Washington, the Edmund Fitzgerald, or the E.B. White.

[Leon]

Power Metal Song titles can be good for ship names

[Imbalance]

No matter what else you end up with, there has to be an Easter egg about a starfreighter that got stuck sideways in a wormhole. Go ahead and call it the Ever Given, since everybody already totally forgot about it.

[Metastachydium]

Alright. Here's a few ideas, in case you don't want to go all-in on the tried and tired old human naming conventions for everyone:

1. Have you read Lowry's Under the Volcano? Hugh's bildungsflashback (the only part of an otherwise so very incredibly good novel I love that I don't care much about, but that's beside the point) features two ships, the Philoctetes and the Oedipus Tyrannus, both named after plays by Sophocles. You can do (kind of) the same with Aeschylan and Euripidean plays for some more refined nation/civilization/whatever and have, say,
—a. Rhesos; Kyklops; Alkestis; Medeia; Herakleis; Stephanephoros; Andromakhe; Hekabe; Hiketis; Mainomenos; Ion; Troas; Phoinissa; Bakkhe; Tauroi and Aulis as medium-size, more agile vessels; and
—b. Persa; Hepta; Desmotes; Khoephoros and Eumenis as larger, heavier craft.

2. For something a bit more alien-sounding, you can pick a genus of, well any category that has genera in it and transliterate the more exotic-sounding species names phonetically, maybe taking the archaic route here and there. In this manner, from Prunus we get
—Apetala; Awiom; Darwasika; Graiana; Inkana; Simoni; Tenella; Pumila; Havardi; Durakina; Pissardi; Rakemosa; Dumetorom; Satiwa; Moldawika.

3. In a similar vein, you can take a relatively obscure language or one that's not widely spoken in your area and likewise transliterate/alter it where you see that fit. For examples, I'll use Arabic and Romanian:
—Sharq; Shamal; Djanub; Gharb; Suqur; Nasr; Ittihad; Muhadjir; and Vynt; Tcher; Sbor; Sedjata; Sware; Ostash; Megar.

4. Going through the components/regions that constitute the human brain can yield another long list of names with an interesting ring to them, including but not limited to
—Arcuata; Cuneata; Pons; Dentata; Crus; Ruber; Cinerea; Radiata; Striata; Lamina; Dura; Calcar; Forniks; Vermis; Meninks.

[Morgaln]

As someone who occasionally has to deal with (commercial) ships in their line of work, most ship names aren't especially creative.
Names of cities, rivers or islands are quite popular, occasionally preceeded by "Spirit of" or something similar. Female names might be somewhat clichéd, but happen a lot, so a baby name generator will also be helpful.

I've also seen ships named after famous actors or artists, as well as fictional characters like the three musketeers.

There are also occasional weird names, like calling your line of ships "My ship <number>", but those are pretty rare.

[Martin Greywolf]

Here's my list of names to use for pirate airships:

Spoiler: There's a few of 'em

Show

Questionably Acquired
Indestructible VII
Big Booty or Bust
Predictably Damaged
Hostile Acquisition
Malicious Intent
Don't Hek the Snek
Serial Peacemaker
Budget Cuts
Lost and Found
Another Happy Landing
Potentially Airborne
Boombringer
Ship Happens
Zombies Can't Fly
Smile Before Flash
Sotally Tober
End of the Rainbow
Devil's Reacharound
Mad-Cuz-Bad
Git Gud
Dodge This
Just a Cloud
Mining Your Salt
Cunning Stunt

For anything else, I usually name it the most pretentious thing I can, Age of Sail ship names are a good source for that, what with Formidable, Salvador del Mundo, Santissima Trinidad and so on.

[OldTrees1]

Celestial Object + Movement Verb (but "noun" the verb)

Sun + Dancer
Star + Chaser
Moon + Skipper
Asteroid + Crawler
Blackhole + Jumper

Names like this basically create a sentence of "The ship verbs the object" which is a nice description for a ship or class of ships.

This can be expanded to other verbs.

Planet + Eater
Comet + Collector

[farothel]

Are your players fans of the Star Wars expanded universe? If no, there's a whole set of star destroyer, mon cal cruiser and other names out there. Star Destroyer names are quite good for evil empires.

[DigoDragon]

Spacy McSpace Face


I like stealing the names off NASA probes/landers for names to science and exploration vessels; Voyager, Mariner, Opportunity, etc.

[Kid Jake]

A buddy of mine in Ark always named his ships The Unsinkable(whatever number he was on). He was up to around The Unsinkable 18 when I stopped playing.

A name like The Invincible(3) could add a touch of humor. Especially if captained by a Zap Brannigan type.

[Anonymouswizard]

A buddy of mine in Ark always named his ships The Unsinkable(whatever number he was on). He was up to around The Unsinkable 18 when I stopped playing.

A name like The Invincible(3) could add a touch of humor. Especially if captained by a Zap Brannigan type.

Heh. I do the opposite in Kerbal Space Program, my basic surface to (Kerbin) orbit rockets are the Bad Idea series, whereas any attempts at deep space craft get the Imminent Explosion title.

If I ever get good enough that I'll be setting up colonies or the like they'll be named something like Tragic Mistake, but I'm still running out of fuel on my way to crash into the Mun.

[Metastachydium]

Celestial Object + Movement Verb (but "noun" the verb)

Sun + Dancer
Star + Chaser
Moon + Skipper
Asteroid + Crawler
Blackhole + Jumper

[Enter the Pulsartoddler and the Damocloid Locomoter, fastest ships of the galaxy.]

[Storm_Of_Snow]

As someone who occasionally has to deal with (commercial) ships in their line of work, most ship names aren't especially creative.
Names of cities, rivers or islands are quite popular, occasionally preceeded by "Spirit of" or something similar. Female names might be somewhat clichéd, but happen a lot, so a baby name generator will also be helpful.

I've also seen ships named after famous actors or artists, as well as fictional characters like the three musketeers.

There are also occasional weird names, like calling your line of ships "My ship <number>", but those are pretty rare.

I have to deal with commercial vessels as well (in a peripheral way), and I can agree - there's some really odd names out there.

There's also a lot of vessels that carry their owning companies name and a (sometimes themed) distinguishing name - to give an example, if Jeff Bezos decided he wanted to own a global shipping fleet and picked birds as the theme, you could have a vessel called the Amazon Nightingale. Or you could have their home/registered planet or build location - maybe there's a Ganymede Sarah or something similar.

Some vessels carry names from their owner's native language (especially oriental languages - and not just Kobyashi Maru ).

And while I second the notion of using a baby naming site, I personally find this site a wonderful source of names - https://tekeli.li/onomastikon/

[Lacco]

Objects in Space, one of my favourite spacefaring games, has this big list of ships. Some of my favourites (which include some great references) are in the spoiler.

Spoiler: Picks

Show

Maltese Falcon
Fortunate Son
Ventriss Storm
Alabaster Folly
Morgan's Honour
Pericles
Nomad Explorer
Septim Power
Bounty
Destiny
Horizon
Starlight
Ruza's Hope
Pygmy Giant
Indefatigable
Irish Rover
Amber Fire
Brigadier
Jasmine Charm
Constant
O'Brien's Folly
De Ruyter
Tradewind
Alcide

[comicshorse]

If you ask me you can't go wrong with nicking the names of some Culture ships

I'm particularly fond of the 'Hand Me The Gun And Ask Me Again' and the 'Ravished by the sheer implausibility of that statement'

https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft

[OldTrees1]

[Enter the Pulsartoddler and the Damocloid Locomoter, fastest ships of the galaxy.]

Based on those names and the assertion that they are fast:

Beware the Pulsartoddler. I have no idea how it goes so fast but was the worst turbulence I have ever felt. It travels from pulsar to pulsar with a signature unsteady zigzag around the pulsar beam as it accelerates or decelerates.

The Damocloid Locomotor on the other hand is a legendary ship of yore. Nobody knows how it was built but it is able to take minor planets and comfortably accelerate them faster than most other ships can fly unencumbered. Wars have been fought over this ship.

[Lord Torath]

These are good for a few moments of confusion in the opposing ships:

The Obvious Distraction
Belay that Order
Initiate Self Destruct
Run for the Escape Pods
All Hands Abandon Ship

[incrediblefrown]

If you ask me you can't go wrong with nicking the names of some Culture ships

I'm particularly fond of the 'Hand Me The Gun And Ask Me Again' and the 'Ravished by the sheer implausibility of that statement'

i always liked these longer phrase names. some of the better known ships in halo are a little like this as well; Pillar Of Autumn, In Amber Clad, etc.

one thing i liked to do when i was toying with notes for a traveller campaign is assign different name schemes to different sectors of space as sort of a cultural marker; if they're from over here, they get a name that's a genus of flora or fauna, like Strelitzia or Aranea. if they're from over there, they get an adjective + noun name. if they're part of this organization, i give them a song title or lyric. just spitballing a bunch of methods that are easy to go grab a random word generator or raid a wikipedia article for, that you can shuffle together to make a list of ships in a port that don't all *sound* like they came from the same place, but you can make one method denser than the others to imply "oh, this is what ships from this place sound like; and these other ships sound like visitors", stuff like that.

[Beleriphon]

You can always use slightly altered versions of famous fictional spaceships, like the Exit Prize or the Century Bird.

At yes, the good old Business Venture and Decade Vulture.

• Carillon of Fallen Empires
• The Tannhäuser Gate
• RRS Hauer
• LSS Royal Star

On that note, you might want to pick some prefixes for commercial or civilian ships. As a real world example: SS is steamship, while MV is the prefix for motor vessel (as in most modern commercial ships). I'd suggest SV for solar vessel and IV for interstellar vessel.

You can also use prefixes for owner names. MSC for example is Mediterranean Shipping Company, which could applied to Argo. Thus MSC Argo is a cargo ship owned by MSC.

Then all you need to do is slap the appropriate prefix on any real ship and you're golden!

On that note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ships

That is a complete list of every ship that Wikipedia lists. There are thousands and thousands of names to choose from.

[Wintorn]

Oh baby, here we go. In no particular order:
The Forward Foray
The Harken Heavy
The Even Effort
Sicarus Scorned
Carion Call
Clarion Hall
The Gum Tug
Collideascope (it's a ramming ship)
Arken Angelus
The Capital Capricious
The Rapscallion
Bright Sky Boundless
The Bumrush
Wanton Whimsy
Concorde Cradle
Bone & Brew
Reckless Abandoned
Sandman
Queen of Hearts
Ace of Spades
King of Clubs
Diamond Jack
Permanent Assurance
Choking Hazard
Gets The Worm
Anyone's Game
Invincible II
No Sense Of Right And Wrong
Pyrite Ship
The Maker's Mark
Flying Obstacle
Null And Void
Oceans Of Wrath
The Nature Of Catastrophe
Forward Thrust
Pretty Lady
Fungible Goods
Scourge Of The Weak
Scourge Of The Week
Stormchaser
Feeling Fine
Lack Of Regard
Heavier Than Air
What Goes Up
A Stone's Throw
Monarch
Heirarch
Ecclesiarch
Autarch
Oligarch
Patriarch
Matriarch
Revenant
Snake Eyes
Royal Flush
Tall Order
Made You Flinch
In Mythril Clad
Wanderlust
The Restitution Of All Things
The Warrant Absolute
Aces High
Right Eye Blind
The Water Foul
Three Left Turns
Two Wrongs
The Hammerhead
The Laughing Bastard
Requiem
Armistice
The Silver Hand
Serenity

Hope It Helps

[Kriegspiel]

A personal favorite has always been Samuel Clemens' riverboat in the Riverworld series.....

Not For Hire

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Here's a really big list of Royal Navy names:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...the_Royal_Navy
I favor names like the Implacable, Indefatigable, Indomitable, Intrepid, Invincible, etc.
The RN has apparently had over 13,000 ships in service, so you could mine this for a long time if you don't mind a British sound to the names.
You could also run them through a translator program to get the same names in whatever RL (or fantasy like Klingon/Elvish) language you'd like.

Fantasy Name Generators has both a Ship and Spaceship version
https://www.fantasynamegenerators.co...ship-names.php

You could also go with weapon names in various languages.
Nahuatl: Atl-atl, macahuitl, cuahualoli, etc.
Japanese: Katana, bo, naginata, etc.
Chinese: Dao, chu-ko-nu, qiang, etc.

Assuming you can use skme English:

This! I love the way the Royal Navy names ships.

You may as well pick famous ships.

Enterprise may be too obvious but there is a darned fine reason a rental car company and Kirk's ship used that name.

Acosta, Johnson (or Evans if that is too obvious)

Warspite though maybe the best name ever. And if any of yoir players get the historical significance give fhem in game props.

[Bohandas]

You can always use slightly altered versions of famous fictional spaceships, like the Exit Prize or the Century Bird.

You could also abstract this in a sort of scattergories type way

Enterprise
Invisible Hand
Capital
Wealth of Nations
Commerce
Return On Investment

Heart of Gold
Harvest Moon
The Needle
The Damage
The Emperor of Wyoming
Unknown Legend
The Old Laughing Lady
The White Line
Drifter
Danger Bird
Big Time
Cinnamon Girl
Powderfinger
The Loner
Hitchhiker
Hippie Dream
Johnny Magic
Love and War
Music Arcade
Monsanto Years
Silver and Gold
Revolution Blies
Four Strong Winds
Act of Love
Thrasher

Red Dwarf
Blue Giant
Main Sequence
Neutron Star
Hot Jupiter

Event Horizon
Ergosphere
Cauchy Horizon
Singularity
Ringularity
Maximum Entropy
Holographic Principle
Black String
Einstein-Rosen Bridge
Ether Flow
Ellis Drainhole
Dark Star
Time Dilation
Firewall
Kerr Metric
Schwarzchild Radius
Gravitational Collapse
Reissner–Nordstrom

Serenity
Ataraxia
Inner Peace
Nirvana
Prajnaparamita
Patience
Humility
Renunciation
Grace Under Fire
Contentment

The Milano
The Pirouette
The Goldfish
Bordeaux
Snowball
Chessman
Lexington
Harvest Wheat
Puff Pastry

Cornucopia of Excellent Goods at Low Prices
Amazon
Acme

The Eagle
The Condor
The Hawk
The Turkey Vulture
Dromaeosaur
Archaeopteryx
Barn Owl
Terror Bird

[Alcore]

Once upon a time in Stellaris I ran out of things to do and so I entered window mode and let it keep running in the background. What did I do to pass the time between researches? I added a few hundred words to my own personal subsector in Mongoose Traveller and, when writing in an alien race, ran into this problem.

For those who play Stellaris you know were this is going;


For my butterfly people all ships come in two part names. A yacht could be named “Ram-zardox” using the following…

First part;

Che - small stations
Fej - large stations
Hom - small military craft
Ram - small residential (free traders qualify but usually shuttles and yachts)
Ima - large residential
Mok - freight haulers
Pa - science vessels
Tra - construction or mining craft
Zof - corvette
Pas - destroyer
Rit - cruiser
Wer - battleship

Last part;
Ata, bon, dum, fid, gentru, ghan, hen, jov, kinen, kot, kow, kuteq, lesuk, letr, par, trogd, wrek, yma, yron, zardox


Plenty more whare that came from but it should be a good start.