50k Boat Names | Hacker News Reader

50k Boat Names

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I can't help but think this article could have used some more polishing. The stats say that there are 101 boats named "Freedom", but if you enter "Freedom" in the search, it shows 48 boats with names including "Freedom", of which however only one is called just "Freedom". That doesn't really add up?!

Also, clicking "Movie/TV" yields a paltry 22 boats, which I think is far too few. E.g. the boat called "USS Enterprise" isn't included. Ok, it could be named after the 1958 aircraft carrier, but I would say the odds are far greater that it was named after the Starfleet ships. Then again, I can understand why "Starlight Express" is included under "Music", but why also all other boats with names containing the word "Starlight"?!

Err, the Enterprise has been a ship name for a few hundred years, quite a bit before Star Trek was ever conceived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise

Amusing that the page for ships called HMS Enterprise linked to from the USS Enterprise page points out that the name came originally from the French!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Enterprise

Oh interesting, I didn't know that. It's an even older name than I thought!

And the actual word is French too...

...although the French spell it with an extra "r". And they had more ships that were named Entreprenant(e) (Enterprising) than Entreprise...

Indeed they did - all the way back to 1672:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Entreprenant

> .although the French spell it with an extra "r".

We don't:

    enterprise
    entreprise

It's not "entrerprise" (that'd be an additional 'r').

It's not totally unlike "center", which is "centre" in french and also "centre" in UK english (but pronounced "center", unless I'm mistaken).

I always thought the carrier was named after Enterprise, PA since the US Navy usually names cruisers after medium sized cities and the earlier carriers were converted cruiser hulls.

Except there is no such place. Perhaps you're thinking of Intercourse, PA?

There's a fun time loop here: The Star Trek Enterprise and the real-life space shuttle Enterprise were each named after the other. In real life, the shuttle was named after the Star Trek ship. In-universe, the first starship Enterprise (NX-01) was named after the space shuttle. [Edit: I remember reading that years ago, but can't find any official source saying so now, although the intro to the Star Trek Enterprise tv series does emphasize the shuttle.]

(Of course, both really come from a long lineage of naval vessels with the name.)

Wikipedia (FWIW) says that the fictional USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) was named after the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) rather than the Space Shuttle Enterprise (OV-101).

Folks, you're both correct!

GP is referring to in-universe canon, where the NCC-1701 was conceived and constructed by Starfleet, long after the Space Shuttle program was obsolete.

Wikipedia articles are largely discouraged from using in-universe perspectives or content, as opposed to Fandom/Wikia/Memory Alpha.

Right. Although in-universe, it was the NX-01 that was the genesis of the name for starships. NCC-1701 was a century later.

Nostromo could be a reference to Joseph Contrad's novel. Its also an italian word for boatswain (according to Wikipedia)

On the first point, I think it's a search of boat names, not boats - they're deduplicated.

Sure, but if you click on the boat called "Freedom", it shows you the data of one specific boat, not "there are X boats with this name". So I still think it's inconsistent...

There are 101 boats called freedom but they're all the same boat because they're not de-duplicated.

Agreed. The „foreign phrases“ category only contains entries starting with A or B

My boat's called Floating Point :)

Epic name

Better than Overflow.

If I had a boat I would totally steal that (and wait for other nerds to strike up conversations).

If you really want to attract the hard-core nerds, name it "IEEE 754" instead.

haha very cute! Got me thinking, IP69K might also be fun, albeit slightly less nerdy.

Saw a car once near my house with the license plate "4745454B". I was slightly uncomfortable in realizing that I immediately knew what it meant.

I’ve always been impartial to Sea++

I feel I like I have seen that name. I know I have seen puns on C but can't remember the specifics.

May have been C-Shell.

I built a model sailboat[1] one time, and if it were for myself and not a gift, I would have named it "Sea Hacker".

[1] It was "Schooner Irene" from here: http://www.bearospaceindustries.com/boats2.html

I draw the line at public points.

If I had a boat and always dropped anchor at the same spot, regardless of tides/weather/etc., I'd name it Fixpoint.

This reminds me of a girl I knew in college who worked as a contracter for a book publisher.

I was surprised to learn that one of the most common types of books people submitted were dairies of their sailing. Like, "we sailed to this island and there was bad weather then we sailed to this other island".

Apparently they'd get a manuscript like this once a week or something. Not sure what the market is like for books like that since I don't think I've ever seen one in a book store.

Ocean sailing leaves a lot of free time. Also the people who can afford to do it have a lot of free time. So I don't find it that surprising.

Sailing can be such a transformative experience I'm not surprised many people write books of the experience. My guess is most people's experience is that interesting to others.

They exist, but generally for more significant voyaging. For example

  - Joshua Slocum - Sailing Alone Around The World (1900)
  - H.W.Tilman - Mishief Among The Penguins (1961)
  - Sir Alec Rose - My Lively Lady (1968)
  - Annie Hill - Voyaging on a Small Income (1993)

at least are on my bookshelf

The ultimate boat-log-as-a-book has to be Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840. It has some great descriptions of the California coast, and does a pretty decent job of giving you an idea of why Los Angeles became the biggest city despite having the worst natural harbor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Years_Before_the_Mast

> Not sure what the market is like for books like that since I don't think I've ever seen one in a book store.

Same.

But then vlogs about people sailing can be extremely successful, with millions of subscribers. But then I take it there's more appeal in seeing young couples, with a six-pack dude and a beautiful woman in bikini, sailing around the world than reading description of the various kind of waves.

I edited a boating magazine (inland waterways, not sea-going) and we got article submissions like this all the time.

I ended up putting in our 'Notes for Contributors' something like "Write about what will be interesting to the _reader_, not what is interesting to you" because apparently this eluded people.

The "Boat ownership by income" is interesting, although easy to misread at a glance.

7% of boat owners earning under $25k is of course very different from 7% of people earning under $25k owning a boat.

I'd love to see an actual chart of boat ownership at income levels, it would read quite differently I'm sure.

The other challenge I assume is that many boat owners are retired and presumably have little or no taxable income

Is there no way to measure that? I'm wondering how they pay for maintenance on the fixed income. Could be an interesting thing to analyze at least, maybe it depends on if you need to winter it...

"no taxable income" != "fixed income"

401Ks, IRAs, and a few other "retirement fund" options give you the option to access either your principal or investment earnings tax-free depending how they were set up.

i don’t think this changes much. ownership is most common for the middle class. which makes perfect sense.

- if you’re rich you don’t need to own a boat, you can spend more per day to rent if you want to use one.

- the cost optimization of owning makes each day using it cheaper, even if it takes more time or space to store it. so those with less money that want to use a boat will buy it

for example renting a boat all day for use on lake tahoe might run you $2,000 to rent. it might cost you $300 in gas if you own the boat. you can tell yourself youre a boat owner now and get 10 days on the lake each year for $3,000 instead of $20,000

> if you’re rich you don’t need to own a boat, you can spend more per day to rent if you want to use one.

There's a bit by Bill Burr where he says something like "you don't want to be the guy that 'owns the boat' (too much upkeep). You want to be the friend of the guy that owns the boat (you supply a case of beer every time you go out and your friend supplies the boat)."

> although easy to misread at a glance.

I think that's because there's an implied word missing

"Boat ownership *sorted* by income" or "Boat ownership *categorized* by income" makes the direction of subset explicit, but feels harder to read somewhat

I've always thought Unsinkable II would be a good boat name

People think lots of things are good boat names. There's no reason there couldn't have more than one Unsinkable that hadn't sunk, and most boats aren't retired by sinking, so Unsinkable II would fit right in.

What about "Really Actually Unsinkable 9"?

You're missing the "You're absolutely right" prefix

Following in the footsteps of "The Hand of God 137"

If I buy a yacht I'd name it "The Ends of Invention" - have been keeping that name handy for almost 40 years since I read CP in a oner in May 1988.

Parent reply is actually way funnier and more original than the GP, which has already been repeated by two other posters.

How about Titanic II?

I've seen how that one ends too :D

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1640571/

unsinkable-2 (copy)-FINAL.revised7-4-19

How is there not one boat named "Sunk Cost"...

It looks bad on the insurance paperwork.

That is a good name.

The article mentions a dataset of names given to people in the USA. This is a fun name explorer WASM based on that data. 811 people in the USA have named their baby 'Diesel': https://docs.malloydata.dev/malloyyo-babynames/name_explorer...

It's at the point I can tell, not only was AI used for this (cool, not a big deal, I use it too!) But I can tell Gemini was used here.

How can I tell? Cuz the last thing it designed for me used the exact same fonts, color tones, border sizes and spacing for buttons.

Maybe Gemini needs a higher default temperature.

Anyways, cool data gathered here tho! Thanks for sharing

I had these exact buttons come from DeepSeek for a demo landing page, it went down a path it called “memphis design”.

Also never forget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_McBoatface

Snap!

I found "Change Order" a pleasure craft out of Alabama.

https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/sd97i4/read_dinghy_n...

It'd be awesome if there was enough metadata to link across to an AIS aggregator/map like https://www.marinetraffic.com/

I don't understand. Marine Traffic is almost identical but has the advantage for displaying the location of the boat.

I came here to say that it's apparently not in the set.

That's the public data. I can tell you I've worked in this industry for 20+ years and run probably one of the biggest sites in this space selling boat graphics. The most popular name is actually "Aquaholic" ;-)

I remember seeing a river cruiser called "Sir Osis of the River"

I bought a sailboat in 2022 and sailed all over the caribbean from florida from 2022-2025. I came across a lot of funny boat names.

My boat was not among them sadly as I was serious about mine.

Fishizzle, Boat Float, Unsinkable II, Knot for Sail, etc.

Money Pit has stuck with me.

Naming things is hard, it's best to pick a theme and stick with it.

A Columbo family mafioso I grew up near used to be in a never-ending competition with the Sultan of Brunei and the Aga Khan over who owned the worlds fastest megayacht. He named his megayachts after James Bond movies: For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, Moonraker, Casino Royale, Skyfall, and Diamnonds are Forever.

https://www.boatinternational.com/luxury-yacht-life/owners-e...

https://www.cosanostranews.com/2012/03/crime-really-does-pay...

I have seen at least one super yacht named for a Bond film.

It had my boat name, which so far I haven't seen duplicated, and isn't particularly specific to anything that would preclude someone else from using it.

I'm surprised my boat is the only in one in AIS also.

Any particular reason that “Andiamo” is so popular? It’s apparently Italian for “let’s go” but why is in the top 10? Is there some reference I’m missing?

love this, i'm a boat captain and collect images of terrible boat names on my phone. people are insane, always baffles me what they will name a boat.

I think the 2 funniest I found here are "TT Firebird Ribeye" which just sounds like an incredibly specific steakhouse menu item, and "Privacy II", which I just think is a bit on the funny-ironic side that we're all now looking at their vessel data and violating their privacy.

It should be illegal to leave a tantalizing comment like that without giving some examples :)

My favorite so far was a motorboat named "Maday". Imagine hailing them on VHF...

If you are interested in the AIS (ship telemetry) data, my team has created a visualization project: https://adsb.exposed/?dataset=Ships&zoom=5&lat=52.3890&lng=4...

How did nobody mention “PITIPIWPIW WIW WIW” yet?

There is a container ship with a name that is onomatopoeia for engine sounds.

https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/246124000

The Ocean Trader comes up, but it's not the same specs as the MV one.

Which is special forces support ship hiding in plain sight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Ocean_Trader

All I know is that when I finally buy that Zodiac RIB, I'm naming it SANGAMON'S PRINCIPLE.

The categorization could use some work. "Comanche" shows up under mythology, for example.

It's like vanity license plates but with even less constraints... "Unsinkable II".

Cool project, you can also view some of the real ship names on https://neon.boats and see their relative ocean swell.

Reminds me of the ship names in the Culture novels by Iain M Banks.

Wikipedia deleted the page with a list of them, but the fans took up the challenge:

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

I once saw a boat called the Betty Swollocks. It made me laugh.

Looked for several of my favorites and didn't see them.

No mention of Choppin' Broccoli which can be found in the Small Craft Harbor in San Francisco

I think the source is AIS which requires paperwork and an FCC issued license to register a name.

My boat is there.

In the 1980s, a Seattle-area Chinese restaurant owner had a sailboat named Won Ton Sloop. (Or so I was told as I never saw the boat myself)

My boat (a small 25ft sail boat) was named "Zesty Enterprise", since all the best movie lines come from The Big Lebowski.

Someone needs to take "Unsinkable II"

My parents had a sailboat, and just walking around the marina there were a ton of clever names. My favorites were:

- Ménage à cinq

- Never Again II

Some of these are really lacking in gravitas.

Would you venture to say that there is a shortfall of it?

Only one Boaty Boat, lacking the McBoatyFace.

It really needs a picture of each boat!

Marinetraffic.com lets people upload pictures of the boat.

Disappointed to see no mention of Boaty McBoatface.

Can't be that often boat naming becomes headlines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_McBoatface

Probably because the article only uses data from the US, so it would be a bit strange if it included the name of a British AUV. Or are you wondering why no one in the US liked that story enough to name their own boat Boaty McBoatface? There is a Boaty Boat, so that's something...

TFA said the names were taken from published AIS data, so perhaps Boaty has not shown up on USA AIS receivers as yet. Since IIRC it is an AUV thats not surprising I wonder if it even has an AIS transmitter. The ship they were asking for names for was actually named Sir David Attenborough in the end.

Anyone can name their boat Boaty McBoatface - i'm shocked there aren't dozens of them...

I'm on mobile and I can't figure out how to search.

Can't believe there's only one Stugots

I probably missed it but can you download all the names? I want to run it through microgpt and see what it comes up with.

Bust Out Another Thousand

The top 3 names being

> Freedom

> Liberty

> Serenity

Reads like a state motto

Disappointed that it's missing name of a yacht or catamaran I once saw on trailer parked by roadside in 1980s Queensland:

Blue E. Zarzoff

no endurance? fags

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