50k Boat Names

113 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by jonathanmkeegan
(beautifulpublicdata.com)

69 Comments

olibaw

7 minutes ago

How is there not one boat named "Sunk Cost"...

rob74

4 hours ago

I can't help but think this article could have used some more polishing. The stats say that there are 101 boats named "Freedom", but if you enter "Freedom" in the search, it shows 48 boats with names including "Freedom", of which however only one is called just "Freedom". That doesn't really add up?!

Also, clicking "Movie/TV" yields a paltry 22 boats, which I think is far too few. E.g. the boat called "USS Enterprise" isn't included. Ok, it could be named after the 1958 aircraft carrier, but I would say the odds are far greater that it was named after the Starfleet ships. Then again, I can understand why "Starlight Express" is included under "Music", but why also all other boats with names containing the word "Starlight"?!

daemonologist

4 hours ago

On the first point, I think it's a search of boat names, not boats - they're deduplicated.

rob74

4 hours ago

Sure, but if you click on the boat called "Freedom", it shows you the data of one specific boat, not "there are X boats with this name". So I still think it's inconsistent...

squigz

4 hours ago

Err, the Enterprise has been a ship name for a few hundred years, quite a bit before Star Trek was ever conceived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise

vikingerik

28 minutes ago

There's a fun time loop here: The Star Trek Enterprise and the real-life space shuttle Enterprise were each named after the other. In-universe, the name comes from the NX-01 being named after the space shuttle. In real life, the shuttle was named after the Star Trek ship.

(Of course, both really come from a long lineage of naval vessels with the name.)

arethuza

4 hours ago

Amusing that the page for ships called HMS Enterprise linked to from the USS Enterprise page points out that the name came originally from the French!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Enterprise

squigz

4 hours ago

Oh interesting, I didn't know that. It's an even older name than I thought!

lacoolj

27 minutes ago

It's at the point I can tell, not only was AI used for this (cool, not a big deal, I use it too!) But I can tell Gemini was used here.

How can I tell? Cuz the last thing it designed for me used the exact same fonts, color tones, border sizes and spacing for buttons.

Maybe Gemini needs a higher default temperature.

Anyways, cool data gathered here tho! Thanks for sharing

georgel

18 minutes ago

I had these exact buttons come from DeepSeek for a demo landing page, it went down a path it called “memphis design”.

CSMastermind

2 hours ago

This reminds me of a girl I knew in college who worked as a contracter for a book publisher.

I was surprised to learn that one of the most common types of books people submitted were dairies of their sailing. Like, "we sailed to this island and there was bad weather then we sailed to this other island".

Apparently they'd get a manuscript like this once a week or something. Not sure what the market is like for books like that since I don't think I've ever seen one in a book store.

clort

an hour ago

They exist, but generally for more significant voyaging. For example

  - Joshua Slocum - Sailing Alone Around The World (1900)
  - H.W.Tilman - Mishief Among The Penguins (1961)
  - Sir Alec Rose - My Lively Lady (1968)
  - Annie Hill - Voyaging on a Small Income (1993)
at least are on my bookshelf

gmiller123456

2 hours ago

Ocean sailing leaves a lot of free time. Also the people who can afford to do it have a lot of free time. So I don't find it that surprising.

lewispb

5 hours ago

My boat's called Floating Point :)

lossyalgo

2 hours ago

If I had a boat I would totally steal that (and wait for other nerds to strike up conversations).

macintux

2 hours ago

If you really want to attract the hard-core nerds, name it "IEEE 754" instead.

lossyalgo

2 hours ago

haha very cute! Got me thinking, IP69K might also be fun, albeit slightly less nerdy.

throwup238

2 hours ago

I’ve always been impartial to Sea++

xnorswap

4 hours ago

The "Boat ownership by income" is interesting, although easy to misread at a glance.

7% of boat owners earning under $25k is of course very different from 7% of people earning under $25k owning a boat.

I'd love to see an actual chart of boat ownership at income levels, it would read quite differently I'm sure.

umeshunni

2 hours ago

The other challenge I assume is that many boat owners are retired and presumably have little or no taxable income

nemomarx

2 hours ago

Is there no way to measure that? I'm wondering how they pay for maintenance on the fixed income. Could be an interesting thing to analyze at least, maybe it depends on if you need to winter it...

happyopossum

36 minutes ago

"no taxable income" != "fixed income"

401Ks, IRAs, and a few other "retirement fund" options give you the option to access either your principal or investment earnings tax-free depending how they were set up.

buildsjets

an hour ago

Naming things is hard, it's best to pick a theme and stick with it.

A Columbo family mafioso I grew up near used to be in a never-ending competition with the Sultan of Brunei and the Aga Khan over who owned the worlds fastest megayacht. He named his megayachts after James Bond movies: For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, Moonraker, Casino Royale, Skyfall, and Diamnonds are Forever.

https://www.boatinternational.com/luxury-yacht-life/owners-e...

https://www.cosanostranews.com/2012/03/crime-really-does-pay...

BigTuna

5 hours ago

I've always thought Unsinkable II would be a good boat name

spogbiper

3 hours ago

unsinkable-2 (copy)-FINAL.revised7-4-19

stinkbeetle

5 hours ago

People think lots of things are good boat names. There's no reason there couldn't have more than one Unsinkable that hadn't sunk, and most boats aren't retired by sinking, so Unsinkable II would fit right in.

gilleain

4 hours ago

What about "Really Actually Unsinkable 9"?

sorokod

4 hours ago

Following in the footsteps of "The Hand of God 137"

arethuza

3 hours ago

If I buy a yacht I'd name it "The Ends of Invention" - have been keeping that name handy for almost 40 years since I read CP in a oner in May 1988.

rrr_oh_man

4 hours ago

You're missing the "You're absolutely right" prefix

jollyllama

3 hours ago

Parent reply is actually way funnier and more original than the GP, which has already been repeated by two other posters.

reactordev

5 hours ago

I bought a sailboat in 2022 and sailed all over the caribbean from florida from 2022-2025. I came across a lot of funny boat names.

My boat was not among them sadly as I was serious about mine.

Fishizzle, Boat Float, Unsinkable II, Knot for Sail, etc.

JKCalhoun

3 hours ago

Money Pit has stuck with me.

daviesiesies

33 minutes ago

I once saw a boat called the Betty Swollocks. It made me laugh.

wowczarek

an hour ago

All I know is that when I finally buy that Zodiac RIB, I'm naming it SANGAMON'S PRINCIPLE.

tgtweak

3 hours ago

It's like vanity license plates but with even less constraints... "Unsinkable II".

brk

5 hours ago

It had my boat name, which so far I haven't seen duplicated, and isn't particularly specific to anything that would preclude someone else from using it.

Aeroi

5 hours ago

love this, i'm a boat captain and collect images of terrible boat names on my phone. people are insane, always baffles me what they will name a boat.

bergie

20 minutes ago

My favorite so far was a motorboat named "Maday". Imagine hailing them on VHF...

Uncle_Brumpus

5 hours ago

I think the 2 funniest I found here are "TT Firebird Ribeye" which just sounds like an incredibly specific steakhouse menu item, and "Privacy II", which I just think is a bit on the funny-ironic side that we're all now looking at their vessel data and violating their privacy.

Rebelgecko

2 hours ago

It should be illegal to leave a tantalizing comment like that without giving some examples :)

bilsbie

an hour ago

I probably missed it but can you download all the names? I want to run it through microgpt and see what it comes up with.

bmsleight_

an hour ago

Only one Boaty Boat, lacking the McBoatyFace.

macintux

2 hours ago

The categorization could use some work. "Comanche" shows up under mythology, for example.

dvh

3 hours ago

I'm on mobile and I can't figure out how to search.

Skidaddle

4 hours ago

It really needs a picture of each boat!

TheMagicHorsey

an hour ago

Reminds me of the ship names in the Culture novels by Iain M Banks.

hbs18

5 hours ago

Can't believe there's only one Stugots

mellosouls

5 hours ago

Disappointed to see no mention of Boaty McBoatface.

Can't be that often boat naming becomes headlines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boaty_McBoatface

rob74

5 hours ago

Probably because the article only uses data from the US, so it would be a bit strange if it included the name of a British AUV. Or are you wondering why no one in the US liked that story enough to name their own boat Boaty McBoatface? There is a Boaty Boat, so that's something...

clort

an hour ago

TFA said the names were taken from published AIS data, so perhaps Boaty has not shown up on USA AIS receivers as yet. Since IIRC it is an AUV thats not surprising I wonder if it even has an AIS transmitter. The ship they were asking for names for was actually named Sir David Attenborough in the end.

happyopossum

33 minutes ago

Anyone can name their boat Boaty McBoatface - i'm shocked there aren't dozens of them...

mh2266

4 hours ago

Bust Out Another Thousand

wxw

4 hours ago

The top 3 names being

> Freedom

> Liberty

> Serenity

Reads like a state motto

warmwaffles

4 hours ago

Someone needs to take "Unsinkable II"