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Boaty McBoatface has tickled lots of us – but some things just don’t need a name Boaty McBoatface has tickled lots of us – but some things just don’t need a name
(5 months later)
The Natural Environment Research Council recently invited the public to suggest names for its forthcoming research vessel, currently being built on the Mersey at a cost of £200m, which will study the ice sheets, marine life and ocean currents of Antarctica – work that global warming has made increasingly important.The Natural Environment Research Council recently invited the public to suggest names for its forthcoming research vessel, currently being built on the Mersey at a cost of £200m, which will study the ice sheets, marine life and ocean currents of Antarctica – work that global warming has made increasingly important.
The consequence of this invitation to the public to “get involved” is now well known. The website Name Our Ship crashed last Sunday after an overwhelming response in favour of Boaty McBoatface, which attracted 27,000 votes, roughly 25,000 ahead of the second-place suggestion to call it Henry Worsley after the former army officer who died in January attempting to cross Antarctica alone and unaided. James Hand, the Channel Islands radio presenter who proposed Boaty McBoatface, tweeted the NERC to say he was terribly sorry. “No need to be sorry James, we are loving it,” the NERC tweeted right back, welcoming the unexpected level of attention that Hand had brought to what is really a faux competition, because in the end, having listened to suggestions, the NERC won’t be bound by the popular vote. It will select a name that takes its fancy, probably one that in some historical or geographical way can be justified as “most fitting”.The consequence of this invitation to the public to “get involved” is now well known. The website Name Our Ship crashed last Sunday after an overwhelming response in favour of Boaty McBoatface, which attracted 27,000 votes, roughly 25,000 ahead of the second-place suggestion to call it Henry Worsley after the former army officer who died in January attempting to cross Antarctica alone and unaided. James Hand, the Channel Islands radio presenter who proposed Boaty McBoatface, tweeted the NERC to say he was terribly sorry. “No need to be sorry James, we are loving it,” the NERC tweeted right back, welcoming the unexpected level of attention that Hand had brought to what is really a faux competition, because in the end, having listened to suggestions, the NERC won’t be bound by the popular vote. It will select a name that takes its fancy, probably one that in some historical or geographical way can be justified as “most fitting”.
Related: RRS Boaty McBoatface leads in poll to name polar research vessel
Rightly so: the public is usually best kept out of these decisions. They will vote for what they know or what they find funny, the popular or the facetious. No room will be found for the learned, the arcane and the memorable. That requires the whims and fancies of elites, the research of scholars and the confidence of little dictators; or perhaps just a society with more blind confidence in itself.Rightly so: the public is usually best kept out of these decisions. They will vote for what they know or what they find funny, the popular or the facetious. No room will be found for the learned, the arcane and the memorable. That requires the whims and fancies of elites, the research of scholars and the confidence of little dictators; or perhaps just a society with more blind confidence in itself.
Names are given to manmade objects such as ships to individualise them; they are borrowed – a woman’s name on a ship’s bow – and the how and why they came to be borrowed is often buried in the minutes of company meetings or lost for ever in the unrecorded private conversations of their owners and makers. Sometimes the name’s new use eclipses the original. To judge from my own experience, most British people in the last century imagined Woodbine as a cheap fag and not a wild flower, even though a stylised version of the flower appeared on the packet. Likewise with Queen Mary: by 1960, how many people when they heard the name thought of a severe-looking woman in a toque – George V’s widow – rather than a magnificent three-funnel Cunarder? And Cutty Sark: who now thinks, first and foremost, of the little witch showing a lot of leg in Burns’ Tam o’ Shanter?Names are given to manmade objects such as ships to individualise them; they are borrowed – a woman’s name on a ship’s bow – and the how and why they came to be borrowed is often buried in the minutes of company meetings or lost for ever in the unrecorded private conversations of their owners and makers. Sometimes the name’s new use eclipses the original. To judge from my own experience, most British people in the last century imagined Woodbine as a cheap fag and not a wild flower, even though a stylised version of the flower appeared on the packet. Likewise with Queen Mary: by 1960, how many people when they heard the name thought of a severe-looking woman in a toque – George V’s widow – rather than a magnificent three-funnel Cunarder? And Cutty Sark: who now thinks, first and foremost, of the little witch showing a lot of leg in Burns’ Tam o’ Shanter?
I grew up among memorable names. It was ideal country for an autodidact or anyone who simply liked looking things up, though I shouldn’t give the impression that every name sent me to Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia in an inquiring flurry. In any case, Arthur Mee would have been of no use for most of them. The elderly grey locomotives that stopped with their trains at the village station had preposterous titles, such as Wandering Willie, James Fitzjames, Jingling Geordie and Luckie Mucklebackit – all of them characters in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels (which had a whole station named in their honour), though nobody of my age knew that, as nobody of my age had read them. The green engines that sped through on expresses were also mysterious. Salmon Trout, Captain Cuttle, Papyrus – who was there to tell us that, in a previous life as horses, they had won the St Leger and the Derby?I grew up among memorable names. It was ideal country for an autodidact or anyone who simply liked looking things up, though I shouldn’t give the impression that every name sent me to Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia in an inquiring flurry. In any case, Arthur Mee would have been of no use for most of them. The elderly grey locomotives that stopped with their trains at the village station had preposterous titles, such as Wandering Willie, James Fitzjames, Jingling Geordie and Luckie Mucklebackit – all of them characters in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels (which had a whole station named in their honour), though nobody of my age knew that, as nobody of my age had read them. The green engines that sped through on expresses were also mysterious. Salmon Trout, Captain Cuttle, Papyrus – who was there to tell us that, in a previous life as horses, they had won the St Leger and the Derby?
Related: The Boaty McBoatface vote makes me proud to be British | Nell Frizzell
But this is only the half of it. Just over the hill, big ships ended their days in the breakers’ yard. I kept a record in a notebook – “Ships scrapped at Ward’s Inverkeithing since 1952” – some pages of which survive to show that among the run of graspable ideas, such as Empress of Australia, British Soldier and City of Canberra, other names stand out for their black opacity. Who or what were Dardanus or Melampus; ditto Mulbera, Maloja and Madura; the same again for Samaria, Scythia and Franconia? They were all British ships, every one of them towed into the bay with a red ensign flying at the stern, but, like vessels in a poem by Kipling or Masefield, they had crossed the world to find their identities.But this is only the half of it. Just over the hill, big ships ended their days in the breakers’ yard. I kept a record in a notebook – “Ships scrapped at Ward’s Inverkeithing since 1952” – some pages of which survive to show that among the run of graspable ideas, such as Empress of Australia, British Soldier and City of Canberra, other names stand out for their black opacity. Who or what were Dardanus or Melampus; ditto Mulbera, Maloja and Madura; the same again for Samaria, Scythia and Franconia? They were all British ships, every one of them towed into the bay with a red ensign flying at the stern, but, like vessels in a poem by Kipling or Masefield, they had crossed the world to find their identities.
The Blue Funnel Line named their large fleet after ancient Greeks because – as the story goes – the young brothers Alfred and Philip Holt, dreaming in their Liverpool garden of commercial success, decided to give their ships Homeric names; they were sure that their enterprise, like the Odyssey, would be a great adventure. Dardanus was a son of Zeus and Elektra, Melampus a legendary soothsayer.The Blue Funnel Line named their large fleet after ancient Greeks because – as the story goes – the young brothers Alfred and Philip Holt, dreaming in their Liverpool garden of commercial success, decided to give their ships Homeric names; they were sure that their enterprise, like the Odyssey, would be a great adventure. Dardanus was a son of Zeus and Elektra, Melampus a legendary soothsayer.
The “M” ships belonged to P&O and British India lines. Oriental names almost certainly, but Madura, a district in southern India, is the only one easy to identify.The “M” ships belonged to P&O and British India lines. Oriental names almost certainly, but Madura, a district in southern India, is the only one easy to identify.
The “ia” endings of the final trio mark them out as Cunard liners. I remember tall single funnels, red with black tops and black bands, and lines of local people going up and down the gangways, taking away dark cabin furniture that must have been installed by Glasgow shipwrights in the early 1920s. The outposts of the Roman Empire had given these ships their names. How this Roman tradition arose at Cunard nobody seems able to say, but when, in 1903, the line decided to build the two largest and swiftest liners afloat, it consulted extensively about the names they should bear. A list was assembled that ran to 461 suggestions, with Cynuria and Cytheria among the frontrunners. Then Professor George Gilbert Ramsay, a classicist at Glasgow University, gave a written opinion. As Cunard’s previous big ships had used up four out of the five Roman provinces in Italy – Umbria, Etruria, Campania, Lucania – he wondered if the company might like to consider the provinces to the west: Lusitania (now Portugal) and Mauretania (now Morocco and Algeria). He pointed out that they had five syllables rather than four. “Perhaps,” he wrote, “these new monsters deserve an extra syllable.” It was a decisive intervention.The “ia” endings of the final trio mark them out as Cunard liners. I remember tall single funnels, red with black tops and black bands, and lines of local people going up and down the gangways, taking away dark cabin furniture that must have been installed by Glasgow shipwrights in the early 1920s. The outposts of the Roman Empire had given these ships their names. How this Roman tradition arose at Cunard nobody seems able to say, but when, in 1903, the line decided to build the two largest and swiftest liners afloat, it consulted extensively about the names they should bear. A list was assembled that ran to 461 suggestions, with Cynuria and Cytheria among the frontrunners. Then Professor George Gilbert Ramsay, a classicist at Glasgow University, gave a written opinion. As Cunard’s previous big ships had used up four out of the five Roman provinces in Italy – Umbria, Etruria, Campania, Lucania – he wondered if the company might like to consider the provinces to the west: Lusitania (now Portugal) and Mauretania (now Morocco and Algeria). He pointed out that they had five syllables rather than four. “Perhaps,” he wrote, “these new monsters deserve an extra syllable.” It was a decisive intervention.
Related: Long live Mr Splashy Pants
The naming habit probably reached its zenith between 1920 and 1950, when the four big railway companies produced thousands of steam locomotives that carried brass nameplates, variously honouring army regiments, public schools, battleships, Derby winners, famous shipping lines, country houses, aristocrats, remote colonies, old kings, young princesses and holders of the Victoria Cross. No other railway system in the world named nearly as high a proportion of its engines. The brass plates represented what seemed most solid, singular and enduring about British life – and also what was most conservative.The naming habit probably reached its zenith between 1920 and 1950, when the four big railway companies produced thousands of steam locomotives that carried brass nameplates, variously honouring army regiments, public schools, battleships, Derby winners, famous shipping lines, country houses, aristocrats, remote colonies, old kings, young princesses and holders of the Victoria Cross. No other railway system in the world named nearly as high a proportion of its engines. The brass plates represented what seemed most solid, singular and enduring about British life – and also what was most conservative.
New ways of travel shrank the tradition of individualising the means of transport. The Spirit of Saint Louis took Charles Lindberg across the Atlantic; the Enola Gray dropped the bomb on Hiroshima – but how many other aircraft are remembered by a name rather than a flight number? The Lusitania sank, flight MH370 vanished, and memory says it was Pan Am 103 that blew up over Lockerbie, rather than a 747 called Clipper Maid of the Seas. As to trains, I think I’ve seen one called Penny the Pendolino. Others are named after Thunderbird puppets – Virgil Tracy, Brains, Parker. There’s a lot to be said for plain numbers.New ways of travel shrank the tradition of individualising the means of transport. The Spirit of Saint Louis took Charles Lindberg across the Atlantic; the Enola Gray dropped the bomb on Hiroshima – but how many other aircraft are remembered by a name rather than a flight number? The Lusitania sank, flight MH370 vanished, and memory says it was Pan Am 103 that blew up over Lockerbie, rather than a 747 called Clipper Maid of the Seas. As to trains, I think I’ve seen one called Penny the Pendolino. Others are named after Thunderbird puppets – Virgil Tracy, Brains, Parker. There’s a lot to be said for plain numbers.