Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)

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Ships share names with people, places, animals and other things. Articles about ships must be named to distinguish them from other similarly-named ships, as well as from other things with which they share a name.

Civilian ship articles should follow standard . These rules apply to named boats and yachts as well as to ships.

A typical civilian ship article name has the following form:

Military ship articles should follow standard . These rules apply to both named and unnamed vessels.

A typical military ship article name has the following form:

Many military ships and boats were not named and are known only by their hull or pennant number. See §Ships with hull number only.

Some navies don't use standard ship prefixes. See §Ships from navies without ship prefixes

Do not use prefixes that predate their use, even though some authors sometimes "backdate" prefixes in this way. In particular, do not use the HMS prefix for English ships from before 1660. The term "His Majesty's Ship" was introduced around 1660 and was routinely abbreviated HMS from about 1780 onwards.

Some navies or nations don't use standard ship prefixes. Titles for articles about these ships have the form:

Do not make up a ship prefix for a navy that did not use one. Thus:

Many types of ship, such as American PT boats and German U-boats, are officially known only by a hull number. In these cases, it can be best to spell out the ship type (e.g. German submarine U-238), but be sure the ship type name is correct. In many cases, the designation is not an abbreviation and may not relate directly to a ship's class or even type. For example, PT-109 can be a redirect to the main article Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109, but U-238 must be disambiguated, because U-238 also refers to Uranium 238.

Articles about vessels with a numerical name should be titled like HMS A1, HMS E11, HMS M1 etc.

Articles about a ship class should follow standard .

A typical ship class article name has the following form:

Uses of the class name as a noun are not hyphenated, while adjectival references are hyphenated. Article names that follow the form just described are adjectival because the compound phrase made up of <class name> and "class" modifies the noun <ship type>. As such, article titles should be hyphenated.

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