Naming Your Ships

By Colyer, in Game Masters

Hey guys,

So I've been very quickly running out of ship names, and most of the ship names I've been coming up with are terrible, terrible cliches. How do you guys come up with fresh ship names? Are there good randomizers? Or are there rules you follow? (I have a relatively easy time with Imperial Navy ships compared to fringe freighters and such).

I just try and think of the owner, what would be appropriate to them. For example, the person who my princess stole her ship from (her father), is an arrogant and pretentious noble type, so I went with something pompous sounding: Ambrian Dawn. After she stole it (and ran around with it for a while before deciding to change the name), she called it the Runaway - very apt because that what she's doing from her family and how she tends to react to most battles.

I named the Group's ship the Kimogila Claw. The Kimo or The Claw for short. here is their ship

https://edge-of-the-empire-6.obsidianportal.com/wikis/the-kimogila-claw

And for the creature:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kimogila

I think the name I hear the most from players is the Centennial Hawk...

Comic book guy voice.

Worst, name, ever...

Quicksilver

Quantum Runner

Lazy Bantha

Corona Runner

Trail Blazer

The Nerf Herder

The Star Dust

Solar Furry

The Crazy Qusar

Nebulon Ranger (I actually used this before the Tales of the Jedi comics)

Red Shift Runner

The Escape Velocity

Galactic Ranger

Tuborg's Gold (A beer in I used to drink in Turkey, a pirate in an ancient campaign was named Tuborg and this was his ship)

The Roche Limit (named for both the Astronomical term and home of the Verpine; which was named for named for the Astronomical term)

Hope this helps a little. My first group was made up of fellow astronomy students back i the early 90's, so we used a ton of terms from our classes. These are just a few of ships from my many campaigns.

There are some suggestions here .

Tuborg's Gold (A beer in I used to drink in Turkey, a pirate in an ancient campaign was named Tuborg and this was his ship)

Haha, Tuborg is a big danish brewery, so if I used that name in my game nobody would take me seriously. :]

Since my EotE players and i have not agreed on our playdate I will state our Legacy names:

Our Sith Lord likes to use ship names with a more positive mindset:

Hope of Tempest

Pride of ...

Justice of ...

My Mandalorian uses more martial names, his personal ship is a Firespray called Atin Beviin (Stubborn Lance), the SDeuce we captured got renamed Besk'gat Tempest.

Edited by segara82

My group named the ship Talaria, the winged shoes of Hermes.

Sassy Gundark

Golden Goose

Sidewinder (YT-2400 with a snake painted on the top, head over the cockpit)

Gift Horse

Fair Warning (a bounty hunter's ship)

I told my players after the first session that if they didn't decide on a name for their ship I'd be naming it The Mincing Dandy.

Sadly they decided on a different, much less fanciful name.

I'm not giving the players the option of naming theirs. It's dubbed, Moist & Fresh Bantha Poodoo.

Actually, The Rebel Dawn was one option I had as well as The Infinity.

My crew chose The Winged Gundark but I sure could go for a random starship name generator - luckily there are a lot to be found.

My crew chose The Winged Gundark but I sure could go for a random starship name generator - luckily there are a lot to be found.

There aren't too many good ones though. Many of them combines words in ways that sound terrible.

Thanks guys. I think I'll be lifting a lot of these names as I go. There were jokes made by my group of naming their YT-1300 the Century Eagle but I told them under no circumstances would I let that happen. What I ended up with was almost worse. After several rejected offerings (I told them their name could be silly, but it had to be something I could reasonably imagine someone naming their ship in Star Wars) we arrived on The Gentleman's Club. I'm not especially happy with it, but it was the compromise we reached and that ship has sailed (pun not intended).

It's the NPC ships that I was more worried about, since I will have to name quite a few as time goes on. And this helps a lot with that.

I agree, HappyDaze. Any of the randomizers I've found so far have been terrible.

It's the NPC ships that I was more worried about, since I will have to name quite a few as time goes on. And this helps a lot with that.

I agree, HappyDaze. Any of the randomizers I've found so far have been terrible.

One of my favorites I came up with for an NPC ship (starting out as one at least, before the players acquire it and potentially rename it) in my upcoming game is the Spice Fiend. Feel free to snag the name if you want.

EDIT: I'll add that instead of looking at what the ship will be used for when trying to give it a name, I'll look at what the pilot's personality is like and try to come up with something that fits that. Not super helpful advice for "filler" ships, but it helps a lot when naming ships for the bigger Rivals and the big bad Nemesis.

Edited by jerrypocalypse

Actually, the Gentleman's Club is kind of cool. I might have to steal that for a bounty hunter someday.

As for random generation, give this a try: Random Nouns and Random Adjectives

Using those two links, I came up with ships like Silent Regret, Worthless Fool and Wicked Distance. Any one of those random pairings are pretty solid for a ship name.

Edited by Desslok

My crew chose The Winged Gundark but I sure could go for a random starship name generator - luckily there are a lot to be found.

There aren't too many good ones though. Many of them combines words in ways that sound terrible.

Yeah, that's what I found as well. I might just have to run through a couple of them and cherry pick the good ones. It wouldn't be too hard to code my own but I bet most people would have zero use for a bash script.

Another ship name I am rather fond of now is The Final Offer. I will be throwing this one into my game as a BBG ship I think. Or it could be their Big Boss' yacht.

Please feel free to use any names or combinations of names I have thrown out, and please let me know if you do use them. :)

The Final Offer comes from the Barman Arkham origins game. When I heard that, I knew it would be perfect for EotE.

I love the sound of Fair Warning for a bounty hunter!

My players' ship is named Lady Cordellia. I've also had an Imperial cruiser called the Carradine, and I'm planning on an Inquisitor's personal ship called the Paragon of Virtue.

Edited by MandalorynOranj

Not in Star Wars, but Serenity, our crews captain named his ship Rowena, from old Anglo Saxon mythology/history. Everyone was like "ehh?". Well due to scheduling conflicts, he couldn't play anymore, so the first thing the crew did was rechristen the ship Oasis. The shuttles were Champagne and Supernova, and even the mule/speeder was called Rum Runner.

My players are flying around in a YT-2400 called The Wynning Hand. They named it this because two of the characters are Mordecai and Saman Wynn. They basically decided to be Dean and Sam Winchester in a Star Wars setting, and it has been an absolute blast for the whole group.

Another ship they have yet to encounter is called the Vengeful Bounty.

Edited by Daniel Anteron

well, i kinda had my players find a 4000yo burned out dynamic-class on ord mantell and basicly rebuild it. then they went and named it the fire hawk cause i forbade them the honour of piloting the ebon hawk.

that was last campaign, this time they've picked up a yt-1300 with a faulty inertial dampner. the prevoius owners (second hand ship) had named the ship the Bouncing Betty. no idea if my PCs will keep the name, or even fix the inertial dampner.

We have had two so far, both have been named "The Pudgy Rancor" (I and II respectively).

We took random adjectives, and then a Star Wars noun. After 5 minutes of spouting those out, we came up with that.

Edited by CrunchyDemon

my players fly The Dormant Dewback

In our main game. The player's chose a Wayfarer named the Beast of Burden as their ship.