Here are a couple names that I have used in games.

The Aa'kua (Old Corellian for personal space)

The Shashalah (Old Corellian for 'a place of wise fools')

The Solar Flare

The Wayfarer

The Fool's Array (a play off of the Idiot's Array, from Sabacc)

The Kestrel

The Star Gypsy

Fortune's Gambit (Shortened later to 'The Gambit')

My players took my suggestion and named their ship the Repeat Offender. They're pretty fond of it.

"Sir! We've found the Missing Lynx!"

One-shot/possible campaign lead-in that I played last night, my character was the one that owned the ship, which I had named the Rusty Crow, a fully intended nod to the Moldy Crow of Dark Forces fame with the Rusty part being that the ship is a "flying rusty bucket of bolts.. but it's mine."

A module I'm working on has a Smuggler/Pilot whose YT-1300 (with smuggling compartments) with the ship being named the Sterling Knave. The first part was due to re-listening to an older Order 66 where Sterling Hershey was a guest, and the second part came up during a free word association starting with the word "rogue."

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).

This being my first venture into the wonderful world of Star Wars RPG I'm trying to get a fresh start from all those 40K names. I was actually thinking about this last night and believe I've come up with names that embody the spirit of fun with which I want to keep my games:

YT-1300

Famously known as the "Millennium Falcon"

I dub thee " Century Mallard "

Better to duck a hundred times then stand up and be shot.

Firespray

Famously known as "Slave 1"

I dub thee " Liberation 4 "

Liberation for all! The pilot and passengers are free to do as they please. Those who hire them are liberated from the burden of their hard earned ( ha ) cash. Those they kill are liberated from their pathetic lives. Those who are captured by them are liberated from their family, friends and any obligation to whatever side they chose.

http://knightsofboanerges.blogspot.co.uk/p/yt-1300-century-mallard-better-to-duck.html

I'm partial to "Aluminum Mallard" for a YT-1300...as I am also a huge Space Quest fanatic. Obviously an homage to the parody of the Falcon. For you young bucks out there, the Aluminum Mallard was Roger Wilco 's Snark-class Speedster that he salvaged from a garbage freighter in the beginning of Space Quest 3: Pirates of Pestulon .

I'm partial to "Aluminum Mallard" for a YT-1300...as I am also a huge Space Quest fanatic. Obviously an homage to the parody of the Falcon. For you young bucks out there, the Aluminum Mallard was Roger Wilco 's Snark-class Speedster that he salvaged from a garbage freighter in the beginning of Space Quest 3: Pirates of Pestulon .

I've only played SQ6, but it made my childhood.

I own all the the games thanks to GOG.com, but I've yet to play them.

A thesaurus works wonders.

But one of the joys is naming a ship, and seeing if the players can spot the reference. and getting the rewarding groan.

The most recent ship names I can remember....

The Tortuga (three guesses what class of ship that was)

The Cobalt Star

Jess's Junk (which was oddly the player's name, not the character name, but it stuck anyway...)

The crew in my game just "borrowed" a modified center-cockpit YT-1300 from (who they later learned to be) a Mandalorian bounty hunter. I decided since they'd likely want to slice the transponder registry to "launder" their new acquisition, I came up with a provenance for the vessel, listing the name, system of registry, and owner (from newest to oldest):

I have a fondness for odd and grammatically unusual names, usually for pirate vessels. Since I'm one of those GMs who also likes to re-cast actors from other parts, sometimes names are allusions, puns, or anagrams of the names that they reference.

Right now my crew is on a Nova courier I've called the "Black Spell". They haven't renamed it yet, and I'm hoping they keep it.

Other names I've thrown out there:

Abstention (Star Destroyer, captained by the Evil D trek crew)

Happen Flower (A stolen luxury yatch from someone who thinks they are thirty years younger)

Forceful Liar (a rebel YT-1300 that was being co-opted by narcotics smugglers)

Bleeding Gold (owned by a star-travelling hutt cartel).

Defiant (A DP20 with a cloaking device. Guess the captain.)

Inquisitor Pearl (An Imperial Customs Frigate operated by an NPC I borrowed from another campaign)

Glass Phantom (A WR-542 Shooting Star operated by Evil Vincent Price an Imperial Bigshot)

bumping this thread because i found it very useful - and for a big thank you to those who contributed!

Ya I loved my groups ship. It was the first name given and it was so good I had to use it lol. It was THE MISTY HARLETT with of course a rather stunning pin up on the side lol

My group consists of two 'blues' - a Chiss and a Toydarian - and a female human Big Game Hunter who wears blue face streaks (ala Trudy Chacon in Avatar) in honour of her blue-hued compatriots.

They named their ship The Twilight's Peak . As they felt it captured the blue-tinge of the crew, and is the preferred time of day for the BGH to strap on the big gun and go a huntin'.

Works for me.

My group have been naming our ships after classic rock songs with female names as their titles, it started because my friend who is the pilot wanted to name the starting freighter "Lola", so I named the headhunter i got later on "Roxanne"....with an optional red light lol

My group are flying an aging Ghtroc Freighter and named her the Great A'Tuin, quite amusing once I realised.

My group has, over the course of several campaigns/game systems, had a wide variety of names ranging from inside jokes to Russian deities (the player who owned the ship was playing a Devaronian who we figured from some Clone Wars episode to have Russian accents).

Some notables:

The Stillwater (as a group of rebels they needed creative ways to bribe/trade on the black market, this ship had a still installed so they could use the booze they made for that purpose)

The Pretty Boy (named after the call-sign of a fallen Zeltron PC)

The Nerf Herder (a barely working boat of a ship, acquired when the captain of this group of pirate PCs' sold their other ship in order to "go legit")

The Shocktapus (A heavily armed gunship stolen after the Nerf Herder crashed. Named after a joke from a previous campaign that involved a PC failing a Deception roll so terribly when trying to convince other PCs of the existence of small, electric octopi that he convinced himself instead)

The No Name (After the loss of the Shocktapus, the group could not decide on a name for their new acquisition and settled on the No Name )

Unnamed Ship 1 through 3 (After the destruction of the No Name , the group decided that naming ships was a) bad luck and b) a waste of time considering their penchant for losing ships at an almost absurd rate)

Our latest campaign, following a group of journalists in the Corellian Sector, has had the same ship for a while called The Sentinal Star. Mostly the PCs just refer to it by its nickname: "The News Van".

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

Comic book guy voice.

Worst, name, ever...

Sounds close to my group. They started off stealing their ship from a Bounty Hunter named Borrowed Time . Had to change it about 6 sessions later when they modified their transponder for reasons of Imperial crimes, the final decision was the Centennial Chicken , with the Dirty Dewback as a close 2nd.

Other names I've used for other ships so far, some I got from a list that I don't recall where from,

Hungry Gundark

Sun Stealer

Amber Blossom

Mind Trick

Reckless Nomad

Midnight Bantha

My group is very much all about acting without thinking about the consequences, and our ship is stolen. Though through an odd assortment of circumstances none of us realize that it's stolen in character (we thought it was a gift). So it has been appropriately christened Risky Business .

The annoyed Phoenix... they didn't tell me why

My sister's group named their YT-1930 "Crimson Clover" (has a red four leaf clover based around the dorsal gun)

In the current group I'm in, as owner and captain of our YT-1930, I named it "The Lucky Number"

I thought about naming it "The Jack" as in "Jack of all Trades" - since the ship is involved in any and every kind of job.

My sister's group named their YT-1930 "Crimson Clover" (has a red four leaf clover based around the dorsal gun)

In the current group I'm in, as owner and captain of our YT-1930, I named it "The Lucky Number"

I thought about naming it "The Jack" as in "Jack of all Trades" - since the ship is involved in any and every kind of job.

If your sister was a fan of AC/DC, she should have "The Jack".

Our group after much thought decided on the name Sassy Gundark, the name had nothing to do with our group only that we all thought the name sounded great.