RIP non-robot ship names

[wadavid]

I hope the German DDs' naming will be the exception not the rule in WoWs. I know that one of the things that seems overwhelming about starting a highly-developed game like WoT is the fact that there are ~8 billion vehicles that all have nearly identical names that are all strings of gibberish like "T34-183/2 auf E100 PzKpfx ELC". Seeing a whole team list of that is fine and well if you've been playing for many years, but learning it from scratch seems daunting.

 

Ships in WoWs, on the other hand, have all had very memorable names (based on cities, military commanders, mythological creatures, and perverts who go around "groBing" people, whatever that means). Until now: the Germans confused their small combat vessels with robots, as they named them things like "V-25" and "Z-23", i.e. robot names, not ship names. And god forbid we start with the compound WoT nonsense and get franken-robots ("V-25 3 aus X-21/150" or something like that). Gross. Groß.

 

Anyway, looking forward to these ships, but hope that most future ships will be called real names and not alpha-numeric security passwords.

[Lampshade_M1A2]

Historically the Germans didn't bother giving destroyers built during wartime proper names for some reason.

[TheKrimzonDemon]

Germany never had, and really never will have, the naval traditions of the other naval powers. With smaller ships, they tended to name the prototype, and then it was numbers all the way. There were even some cruisers named in this manner. When you're naming your capital ships after people that were prominent in the war that had just ended, you ain't got much to go on. Think about it, Germany as we know it today only came into existence in, I think, 1871. They didn't have a true naval force until around 1906, 8 years later, WW1. It's really hard to name your ships when you only have 30-40 years to draw on, and not many heroes, to draw on, at that.

 

[this_might_be_slak__]

I agree, not a fan of trying to figure out what half the Tanks are on WoT by something akin to a VIN number.

[Super_Dreadnought]

I agree. Adding to it, having proper names means that we can give nicknames to our beloved ships.

 

Shiny Horse, Derpitz, Mutsucky, Furry Taco, Dunk, Monty, etc.

 

How the hell are we supposed to work with stuff with V-25 and Z-23?

[Macabe]

I actually prefer the specific names. It makes for easier research. Personally I think paper ships should have all of their design names instead of fake names.

[vonKaiser]

They did the same thing for subs.  U-35, U-48 etc.  Just seems like the smaller, less grandiose ships didn't get names like Bismarck and Tirpitz. 

[K1ra_Yoshikage]

Germany never had, and really never will have, the naval traditions of the other naval powers. With smaller ships, they tended to name the prototype, and then it was numbers all the way. There were even some cruisers named in this manner. When you're naming your capital ships after people that were prominent in the war that had just ended, you ain't got much to go on. Think about it, Germany as we know it today only came into existence in, I think, 1871. They didn't have a true naval force until around 1906, 8 years later, WW1. It's really hard to name your ships when you only have 30-40 years to draw on, and not many heroes, to draw on, at that.

Never will? Lütjens, Rommel, Mölders, Hamburg, Bayern, Hessen and Schleswig-Holstein were destroyers of the Bundeswehr.

 

 

[TabbyHopkins]

They did the same thing for subs.  U-35, U-48 etc.  Just seems like the smaller, less grandiose ships didn't get names like Bismarck and Tirpitz. 

 

When you've only got 4 actual battleships, and almost 2500 submarines...something's gotta give.

[DedPan]

Going by Wikipedia it seems like they did name at least some of their destroyers (such as Z1 aka Leberecht Maass) but stopped doing so at Z23 onward.  Just given them letters and numbers does seem kinda impersonal though.

[Super_Dreadnought]

Germany never had, and really never will have, the naval traditions of the other naval powers. With smaller ships, they tended to name the prototype, and then it was numbers all the way. There were even some cruisers named in this manner. When you're naming your capital ships after people that were prominent in the war that had just ended, you ain't got much to go on. Think about it, Germany as we know it today only came into existence in, I think, 1871. They didn't have a true naval force until around 1906, 8 years later, WW1. It's really hard to name your ships when you only have 30-40 years to draw on, and not many heroes, to draw on, at that.

 

I'm afraid I don't buy that at all. It's not required to have a long naval history with many heroes to name a ship.

 

Japan for example by the time of WW1 were themselves a recently modernised nation, with the IJN only formed in 1868, and lacking naval traditions (which they mostly borrowed from the British), and naval heroes. That didn't stop them naming ships after provinces, mountains, rivers, and natural phenomenon.

 

US used states and cities to help name theirs. UK do similar and also use cool words like 'Illustrious', 'Dreadnought', 'Vanguard', etc. And sometimes we derp out and name them after flowers like HMS Pansy.

 

I'm pretty sure Germany could have found names if they really wanted to, regardless of lacking naval tradition. 

[wadavid]

I actually prefer the specific names. It makes for easier research. Personally I think paper ships should have all of their design names instead of fake names.

 

I would like to be a supertester some day, so I retract my complaint. 

 

 

When you've only got 4 actual battleships, and almost 2500 submarines...something's gotta give.

 

Russia/Soviet Union has/had about a billion destroyers, and seems to have had no trouble naming them (mostly й/ий-ending adjective names, which I like).

[ckupf]

Funny, I'm more bothered by WG naming the Moskva, Zao, Hakuryu, FDG, GK etc...

[TheGirlFromIpanema]

"Z" means Zerstoerer (Destroyer). That's what they were called. They didn't have any anthropomorphisms.

[MrDeaf]

"Z" means Zerstoerer (Destroyer). That's what they were called. They didn't have any anthropomorphisms.

 

yeah they did.

Z1 through Z22 came with names.

At which point the Germans ran out of names.

[ArIskandir]

 

yeah they did.

Z1 through Z22 came with names.

At which point the Germans ran out of names.

 

I read somewhere they stopped for moral reasons, as by that time anything afloat was pre-destined to rest under the waves. Having your town-sake or favourite hero sunk was deemed bad for the morale of the population so they went with impersonal names instead. On the same line they renamed Deutschland to Lützow.

[Izolyn]

That's when you look at the tier list and say "ah yes, that Z-23 is the T8 German DD, got it" and move on.

 

If you can't remember the characteristics of "T8 German DD" to know what it's capable of, I don't think the ship having an actual name will help you.

[Deputy276]

That's when you look at the tier list and say "ah yes, that Z-23 is the T8 German DD, got it" and move on.

 

If you can't remember the characteristics of "T8 German DD" to know what it's capable of, I don't think the ship having an actual name will help you.

 

Well said! 

[Yoshiblue]

Alright, i'm willing to take a crack at it. 

 

Original:
V-25 (tier II)
G-101 (tier III)
V-170 (tier IV)
T-22 (tier V)
Ernst Gaede (tier VI)
Leberecht Maass (tier VII)
Z-23 (tier VIII)
Z-46 (tier IX)
Z-52 (tier X)

 

Nicknames:

Victory 25
The Great 101 (Learn to play ship )

Viceroy 1-70 (Get it? It will be top of the food chain in T-III/IV matches )

The Tubular 22

Pending

Pending

The Z-23

The 4-6

Zer 52

[NimitsTexan]

 

yeah they did.

Z1 through Z22 came with names.

At which point the Germans ran out of names.

 

They needed them all for the 40 million different variants of the Panzer/Jadgpanzer III-VI they built.

[dseehafer]

I actually applaud WG for giving them their historical designations and not making up random names forcing us to try to guess which class of ship each one is. This way someone who doesn't know what the Z-23 is can simply type in "Z-23 destroyer" in google and instantly find out that it was a Type 1936A class destroyer. Can you imagine if they had given Z-23 a name like Gunther Von Muller? Good luck typing that into Google search and coming up with any relevant results.

 

I will, however, argue that they could have called T-22 the Elbing, as that was the unofficial nickname of the Flottentorpedoboot Type 1939 class as all ships were built in Elbing. But that's the only exception.

[Formerly_Wu]

I will, however, argue that they could have called T-22 the Elbing, as that was the unofficial nickname of the Flottentorpedoboot Type 1939 class as all ships were built in Elbing. But that's the only exception.

 

Elbing was the Allied nickname for them. Would be a little gauche to name it after what its enemies called it.

[BlazerSparta]

Or....how about.....names that aren't in capslock.