There have been many things with the name “Trump” plastered on them; towers, hotels,
casinos and golf courses, and there will be many more, but one thing is unlikely; an American
supercarrier named USS Donald J. Trump, but the reason for this, is not what you think!
We are by no means picking on president Trump! There may not be a carrier called USS Barack
Obama either, especially now that a future carrier has already been named
after Doris Miller, a black sailor who heroically saved many lives during the
Pearl Harbor attack. I guess that counts as one for the African American community!
But who gets to name the US Navy ships, and how do they come up with the names?
The US Navy as we know it today started with only 6 frigates, the construction of which
was authorized through the Naval Act of 1794, signed by George Washington. The main reason
for this was that American merchant ships were being captured by pirates, and the US
government had no means to protect them. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries,
there were no formal procedures for naming ships. That was until 1819,
when Congress passed an act stating all of the ships of the Navy of the United States
should be named by the Secretary of the Navy. The secretary has fulfilled this role ever since.
But Congress also provides guidelines for naming the ships. For instance, destroyers
are typically named after famous US Naval leaders and distinguished heroes, like USS Arleigh Burke,
Forrest Sherman and Zumwalt. Littoral combat ships are usually named for mid-tier cities,
small towns and other US communities, like USS Milwaukee, Cleveland and St. Louise.
Amphibious Assault Ships are named after important battles like USS Tripoli and Bougainville.
New Underway Replenishment Oilers will be named after people who fought for civil rights and
human rights, like USS John Lewis, Harvey Milk and Earl Warren, and any New frigates,
would be named after the first six frigates from 1794. We’ll get to those names shortly.
All this said, the rules for giving certain types of names to certain types of Navy ships
have evolved over time. For example, Attack submarines were once named for fish,
then later for cities, and most recently for states. Cruisers were once named for cities,
then for states, and most recently for battles. State names were once given to battleships,
then later to nuclear-powered cruisers and ballistic missile submarines, and most recently
to Virginia-class attack submarines. It is also a tradition that upon
decommissioning of a ship, its name be re-assigned to a new ship. For example,
as of 2021, the name “Enterprise” had been assigned to 9 different Navy ships, of course,
not all at once. Not more than one vessel of the Navy may have the same name at any given time.
But as you can imagine, there have been deviations from these rules. In fact, the
very first deviation goes back to the very first Secretary of the Navy, and those six frigates!
George Washington had asked that the names of those first six frigates be inspired by the United
States Constitution, and he selected the first 5 names himself: USS United States, Constellation,
Constitution, Congress, and President. But the first Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert
decided to name the sixth ship, USS Chesapeake, named after Chesapeake Bay.
Deviating from the naming conventions has continued ever since, and in some cases,
has stirred up controversy by being labeled politically motivated, inappropriate or
disrespectful, and this has mostly been the case, when a ship was named after a person.
What did it take to name an aircraft carrier after a living former president?
Some give and take across the political aisle!
The Clinton administration agreed to name an aircraft carrier after the former Republican
president, Ronald Reagan while Reagan was still alive. But that decision was made
only after another carrier was named for Democrat President Harry Truman. What’s interesting is that
the carrier that was named after Truman was initially supposed to be called “USS United
States”. Priorities, right?! But President Truman had canceled the construction of the
very first supercarrier in 1949 just a few days after her keel was laid down. That ship was also
named “United States”. So Harry Truman managed to cancel the name “United States” twice!
When an aircraft carrier was named after Bush the father, at a time when his son was president,
some questioned the influence that the White House may have had on that decision. In
addition to that, some raised safety concerns. See, by the time the keel of USS George H.W.
Bush was laid down in Sep of 2003, the United States had already invaded Afghanistan and Iraq,
under the leadership of George W. Bush. So some feared that the ship’s name would make
it a target for nations that resented the policies of the younger Bush.
On that note, we should mention that Aircraft carriers in the US Navy are now generally
named in honor of past US Presidents. But not every president seems to get their own ship.
Even Though President Nixon was a Navy veteran, he never got a ship named after him,
assuming because of his resignation in the middle of an impeachment in the aftermath of the
Watergate scandal. If you look at the post-Nixon presidents who don’t have a ship named after them,
they either didn’t serve in the military, that would be Presidents Clinton, Obama and Trump,
or they were extremely unpopular at the end of their term, like the younger President Bush.
What do you think about naming a US Navy warship after a foreign national?
There have been instances of this, including an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer named after former
British prime minister, Winston Churchill. Of course there were some who opposed the name
selection, but Churchill was made an honorary US Citizen in 1963. However, the timing of
this was questionable, because at the time, the Clinton whitehouse was involved with the Irish
peace process, and maybe, just maybe, naming a ship after Churchill would have made things
more favourable with the British parliament. But some names were chosen to compensate for other
shortcomings. In 1984, Rep. Congressman William J. Coyne from Pennsylvania blasted the Reagan
administration for naming an attack submarine for Pittsburgh, calling it “a shameless attempt”.
The unemployment rate in that area was high at the time, and the congressman
claimed that the administration had chosen to name the submarine USS Pittsburgh in order to
keep the residents’ dissatisfaction with the unemployment situation, under control.
You might be thinking, what could be an inappropriate name for a US Navy ship?
Capt. William F. Calkins was in charge of finding names for ships between 1943 and
1946. One of his challenges was finding new names; according to him, a task easier said than done,
to the extent that the National Museum started naming new fish after the submarines, and not
the other way around! Let me elaborate: At the time, submarines were named after
fish, but with about 500 submarines afloat, under construction, or planned to be built
at the peak of the shipbuilding program, there was a shortage of good fish names.
So Calkins started naming the submarines after words that sounded “fishy”,
but were not actual names of fish. He then worked with an ichthyologists at the National Museum to
register those as fish names, to be then assigned to sub-species of fish that will be discovered in
the future. Brilliant, but he did run into some complications, when the commanders of those new
submarines started asking for a picture of the fish that their submarine was named after.
When it came to naming the new Escort Carriers after bodies of water,
Calkin and his team hit a goldmine when they came across the names of some bays in Alaska
that no one had previously used for Navy ships: Chaplin Bay, Elbour Bay, Ulitka Bay, and so on.
But while those ships were still under construction, they had to burnish the names,
IN A HURRY! See, it was later brought to Capt. Calkins’ attention who used to own Alaska before
Americans purchased it. Those exotic names chosen for the ships were all Russian.
On that note, a number of ships did in fact end up with Russian names,
like USS Petrof Bay. I’m no Russian language expert, but Petrof is pretty damn Russian!
But name selections can piss off, not just politicians, but religious groups too!
Los Angeles-class attack submarines are named after U.S. cities. For example USS Boston,
Dallas and Memphis to name a few. But one of the subs in the class is named “USS City of Corpus
Christi”, so that it is clear that the name is referring to the city of Corpus Christi,
and not the body of Christ, which is what Corpus Christi means in Latin! The addition of the word
“city” to the name was done by the US Navy after religious groups protested that a war machine
cannot bear the “body of Christ” as its name. There has been ongoing tensions between “orthodox
traditionalists” who believe that Navy ship names should remain faithful to the naming conventions,
and “pragmatic traditionalists” who see the orthodox traditionalists as too strict.
The attempts to create and follow a rigid system have failed, probably because most Navy
secretaries have been of the pragmatic group. But to be fair, some rigidity is needed so the vessels
in a three-ship class of attack submarines are not named Seawolf, Connecticut and Jimmy Carter,
named for a fish, a state, and a President, which is something that indeed happened!
It seems safe to say that the processes of ship-naming will continue to evolve as it
previously has. The fleet and technologies are changing so the names would change also.
According to a July 2012 report to Congress, one could almost argue that the exceptions made
when naming ships after Presidents or Members of Congress have occurred frequently enough
that, rather than being exceptions, they are a “special cross-type naming convention”.
Ever since the naming of those first 6 frigates of the US Navy, there has been tensions between
orthodox and pragmatic traditionalists. But what can you expect, when one of the US Navy’s oldest
ship-naming traditions is the secretary of the Navy’s discretion, to break the rule.