Boat Name - Reason for yours

[Leo Reise]

I do not recall a thread covering this topic. Boat names are interesting. They usually have meaning for the owner - sometimes funny, sometimes not so much, and sometimes just because.

Ours paid honour to our boat’s history in part, and a meaning for us. My Admiral is a steers-person for the KAB Dragon Boat Team - 3 time World Champions. The combination has its own meaning in dragon folklore.

History first named - Cajun Moon
Second name - Moon Dog II
Our name - Moon Dragon

What is your story?

 

[MurrayM]

Good call on your part...like the name

Ours has had the same name for three owners. Badger seemed to fit, being small, tough, and belligerent in its determination.

 

[Beaverlake]

Knot Home - all two or three interpretations are somewhat obvious I think. My wife came up with it during the purchase process as we were dreaming of extended cruising in the PacNW.

 

[LearPilot]

Ours is "Cell Mates." Had many people quizzically look at the name and then the wife and I. "We were in jail together" is the standard answer.

"Oh, you are doubting the co-ed prison? Well, she USED to be a guy...."

The real answer? The wife and I co-owned a string of cell phones stores for twenty years. I really do fess up and give them the real story before we depart.......hahaha

 

[Sea Q]

Sea Q a call sign during the last war
Also mentioned in the Contact movie with Jordy .
Forget about losers that name their boats to just be funny and witty
"Chicken Ship" doesn't cut it for me

 

[C lectric]

Island Pride for the P.O's wife's racing horse.

It's registered, the boat name, so would involve a bunch of effort to change it and by the time we could afford to change it we decided we liked it.

 

[MurrayM]

Island Pride for the P.O's wife's racing horse...

That there is several layers of disposable income!

 

[menzies]

Sea Q a call sign during the last war
Also mentioned in the Contact movie with Jordy .
Forget about losers that name their boats to just be funny and witty
"Chicken Ship" doesn't cut it for me

Losers?

Free country. You name your boat what you want and they can too.

Yours isn't any more right or wrong as theirs.

Just because you or I wouldn't use that name, just live and let live.

 

[menzies]

I do believe there have been a few threads already on this, but with so many new members, certainly no harm in going again!

Boat name is SONAS.

Gaelic (Irish) for Happiness.

 

[kthoennes]

Xanadu -- relatively common boat name I know, but that's what the previous owner named it and we kept it. Most people think of the Olivia Newton John/ELO movie but I'm an English major and we really kept the name for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's sake (but then I did love ELO in my college days too). And we do have a green lighted Lucite panel inset into the dock that glows XANADU so we can find our slip on a dark night, so okay the sign is a little disco too. Our stretch of the Missouri also fits this stanza of Kubla Kahn perfectly, right down to the sunny summers along the sheer cliffs and then jagged ice-dams in winter.

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

 

[Wayfarer]

Mines been called Sylphide since she was built in 1985. It’s not what I would have picked, but I didn’t feel right changing it. I do like that it’s unique, and I think it suits her well.

If she’d been a blank canvas when I bought her, she’d be Aluminum Falcon now.

 

[Comodave]

Ours is Never Say Never because we weren’t supposed to buy another boat after the one before this one.

 

[Woodstock]

Ours is "Pawseidon" for a couple of reasons. We cruise with our two pups and one of us is Greek!

 

[rslifkin]

Mine is "Hour Glass". My grandparents chose the name, as the original owner stipulated a name change as a condition of sale. Their previous boat was a woody named "All Hours". So this one became "Hour Glass", as in our first fiberglass boat but with the spelling from the old boat. I got the boat from them (after having known the boat my whole life), so the name stays.

I've already decided that a future dinghy will be "Pint Glass" or something similar.

 

[Hippocampus]

Hippocampus is Greek for sea horse. It’s also the area of the brain involved in making memories. It’s also a big clue as to what I did for work. We kept the name as part of the sale of our last boat and will use it on the next. We’ve had 8 boats with this name so friends know if a boat carries that name it’s probably mine. Of interest we have run into two other boats with that name. One was a Polish couple. The other French. But haven’t seen an American flagged boat with it. They say you should pick a name easily understood on VHF. Failed on that but we get by.

 

[KnotYet]

My first 'real' boat I named 'Dark Star' after the titular spaceship in the movie.
The fictional Dark Star met with an untimely end as did the one I owned and lived on...

 

[Lepke]

Charlie Harper
Considering divorce, family court, alimony, and child support, Charlie had the right idea.
It was that or Deadwood, but I have a wood boat.

 

[kchace]

Blue Heaven is both a play on words because we like the water and also a reference to the hull being blue and we love being on her. Oh, also, the admiral likes it.

 

[mvweebles]

Round bottom full displacement boat with 25% ballast as designed. Weebles seemed perfect (For those of a certain age, the child's toy "Weebles wobble but the don't fall down")

She was named Shy Platypus when we purchased her, a simply awful name. The PO suggested he'd learned his lesson and would never again grant an 11 year old naming rights.

I later came to know a close friend of the original owner who so enjoyed taking the boat from Newport Beach CA to Baja that he bought Willard Marine in the late 1970s. Had I known the rich history of my Hull #40 which was launched as Taras, I would have reverted her name to the original out of respect.

Peter

 

[HeadMistress]

My late husband and I bought our first boat together before we got married. Both of us had strong ideas about what we wanted to with and what was needed on it...every discussion seemed to end with "It's Mine too!" So that's what we named the boat.

When he became terminally ill with bone cancer, we either had to upgrade to a boat with a lot more creature comfort or give up boating which he did not want to do. We found a SeaRay 340 Sundancer that filled the bill...now to find a name for it. And when I read the poem "INVICTUS" I knew it was the only thing we could name it. Most people know the last two lines...here's the whole poem:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
--William Ernest Henley

--Peggie

 

[ctjstr]

Satisfaction was on ours when we purchased. We both liked and and with the previous owners permission, kept it. Just have to change the hailing port when we get around to it.
toni

 

[ksanders]

I wanted a boat that could cross oceans.

My wife did not want a boat that could cross oceans.
Actually more strongly than that my wife refused to let me have a boat that could cross oceans because she knew i was crazy enough to actually do it.

A picture tells a thousand words.

 

[angus99]

Contrary to popular belief, Stella Maris was not named after Roger’s wife nor does it derive from a famous line in A Streetcar Named Desire. My family spent many happy vacations on Sullivan’s Island, SC, and there’s a small church on the northern end with that name. We’re not particularly religious; just thought it sounded more exotic than “Star of the Sea.”.

 

[Lou_tribal]

When we bought our new to us boat we planned to change her name, finally we kept it as we loved it.
Her name is Bleuvet and it fits perfectly. Almost nobody knows what a bleuvet is and that is fine for us.
Wanna guess what that name means?

L

 

[FF]

LUCY , our Maine Coon cat was the kindest , easiest to live with pet we had ever had, when we bought our Navy Utility to convert into a cruiser we hoped the delight would continue, happily it did!

 

[Always Late]

I have been working on tugboats my whole life, at about 7-8 knots, I drive slow, I never get in a hurry, my family always complains that my wife and I are always late to family functions so it was appropriate to name the slow boat(Marine Trader) "Always Late". Our dink is "a little late"
G

 

[angus99]

When we bought our new to us boat we planned to change her name, finally we kept it as we loved it.
Her name is Bleuvet and it fits perfectly. Almost nobody knows what a bleuvet is and that is fine for us.
Wanna guess what that name means?

L

A shade of blue? (or a sad animal doctor?)

 

[Bacchus]

Mine is "Hour Glass". My grandparents chose the name, as the original owner stipulated a name change as a condition of sale. Their previous boat was a woody named "All Hours". So this one became "Hour Glass", as in our first fiberglass boat but with the spelling from the old boat. I got the boat from them (after having known the boat my whole life), so the name stays.

I've already decided that a future dinghy will be "Pint Glass" or something similar.

How about "Shot Glass"

 

[rslifkin]

How about "Shot Glass"

We had that thought too. No final decision yet, but shot glass seems a little more likely to attract unwanted law enforcement attention.

 

[ScottC]

We both happened to like this Britcom...