What’s in a name?

Since its silly season and we are being inundated with news stories about baby names I figured it would be a pretty good time for me to finally write my boat name blog.

 When I was a junior reporter I got all the good jobs – and one of them was the dreaded Baby Name Story. Back then this hardy annual involved physically going through the birth section of the year’s papers and picking out the most popular and any patterns.

 The year I landed the job we had a run of precious stones. We had a Diamond, an Opal, an Emerald and several Rubies. This year I was quite surprised to see history repeating itself with Ruby being the most popular girls’ name. I was quite shocked. I’d figured it would be something from the Twilight saga.

I guess the inner cub-journo never dies because I found myself doing the same thing on our Pacific trip – collecting quirky boat names and picking up patterns.

Our boat – Wildflower (II because of a teensy lapse in registration) was named after a Tom Petty song about freedom on the ocean (or perhaps wacky bakky – who would know?) and there were certainly a number of other musically inspired names out there.

They ranged from the Pink Floyd inspired – Comfortably Numb and Crazy Diamond to the sublimely tacky Elvis on Tour – complete with picture of The King’s head. Others included Simply Red (painted red), Santana and – a personal favourite of mine – a big old steel lady called Iron Maiden.

Then there were the fantasy inspired names. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe produced Narnia and Dawn Treader, Lord of the Rings Frodo and Star Wars Jedi.

Back home in Opua I was quite taken with the names of the racing boats at the local yacht club – Trouble Bubble, Frivolous Fish and – my favourite – Hogwarts Express!

Others that tickled my fancy were Saline Solution, Bamboozle, Secret Agent Man, New Kitchen and the Magic Roundabout. We also came across one called Viagra, which prompted all sorts of theories on how it earned its name!

We also heard tale of a boat called Jolly Rogering which caused much hilarity when called over the radio.

Bad Kitty was one of my favourite names for a catamaran, closely followed by Catatonic.

Colour and name also went together with some boats with Simply Red joined by, Citrus Tart – yellow and our friends Fergus and Dianne’s boat Only Blue, which was dark blue until they discovered the sunlight on the paint made it really hot.

There were also lovely puns like Sea-esta, several Infinities and numerous variations of Charisma.

The flip side of the annual baby name story is the list of names people were not allowed to call their babies. These have included such gems as Violence, No. 7 Bus Shelter and the poor girl who had to go to court to have her name changed from Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii.

You are also not allowed to give your child a royal title or any other that they have not actually earned and the same goes for boats. You are still not allowed to name a boat after a member of the royal family, because back in the day most royals had boats names after themselves. I am unsure whether there are any other rules about what you can and can’t name a boat, but would be interested to find out!

Paddy says if he ever got another boat (don’t listen Wildflower!) he would name it Never Again II, so here is my question to you. If you had a boat, what would you name it? I think boat names say a lot about people.

I would also love to hear any interesting boat names that other boaties have come across –  just to add to my collection 🙂