Talk:Ship prefix/Archive 1

Archive 1

Japan

I made List of battleships of the Japanese Navy and based on my knowledge of the Japanese Navy, decided not to add 'IJN' or 'HIJN' prefix. However, if there should be a prefix, I purpose that it be the same one as the Great Britain's, 'HMS' from the historical point. The Japanese Navy was basically modeled after that of the Great Britain as most of teachers came from there. Most of the training and even the point of officers having to buy his daily meals were copied from Great Britain's Navy and it seems fitting and apropriate that the prefix to be copied too. Yes, it's true that a translation of Teikoku Kaigun would be 'Imperial Navy' but I don't think this would have been the prefix as the Great Britain of that time was called 'British Empire' but was never called 'BEN' or 'BIN'. A Japanese Navy ship visited Britain back around 1930s and there might be a news article in the library in Britain with newspaper clipping from that time. Please check, thanks. Revth 15:24, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Many navies do not have a standard prefix for their ships; e.g., Germany under the Kaiser used "SMS" (and "SMU"), but under Hitler used nothing. I suggest that ships from those navies be disambiguated as [[COUNTRY TYPE NAME) -- e.g., [[Japanese battleship Yamato]] -- rather than by making up an English-language-based abbreviation that was never used by the ship's crew. --the Epopt 18:51, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Japan issue is also covered at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (ships). It's true that HIJMS is English-based, but its use by Togo shows its hardly a foreign invention the Japanese never heard of, and wouldn't approve of. It's also of long standing at this point, having been in use before WWII in Western naval circles. Noel 12:08, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If there's only one example usage in all of the volumes of English verbiage written by Japanese in the years from the 1860s to the 1940s, that strongly suggests it's a fluke rather than a pattern. Pre-WWII Western writers were not very good in the cross-cultural awareness department, would have casually assumed British practice as the global standard and not troubled to inquire further. If "HIJMS" really was standard, it should have thousands of uses to cite, and we wouldn't have to be holding up a scrawled note on a postcard as our "proof". Stan 14:25, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hey, the Togo one was one I found in a few minutes with a quick web search. That hardly constitutes proof that it's the "only one example". And what's the source for your blithe assumption that pre-WWII British were incapable of cultural sensitivity? Yes, many were - but many were also very perceptive and sensitive observers. Also, this is an English-language encylopaedia, so we call e.g. it "Japan", not "Nippon". The modern "JDS" is definitely therefore not what the Japanese (another "our word") would use, since it uses "J" from "Japanese". If HIJMS is the long-standing Western usage, that counts for something. If Togo thinks it's the appropriate term to use when writing in English, who are we to say we know better? Noel 04:39, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've done lengthier searches, including in the university library, and come up dry. Nations do have official foreign-language equivalents for their prefixes - Norway and the Netherlands are two obvious examples. You can go to their websites, to Jane's, etc, and get authoritative declarations of preferred English-language prefix. Conversely, I have 15 volumes of Morison, who talks about hundreds of Japanese ships and never once uses "HIJMS" even when it would be extremely convenient, and my other books do likewise. At this point I'm wondering if maybe it's like an urban legend or something. Who's the earliest writer known to have used the prefix? Stan 05:34, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I’ve found several pre-WWII Japanese postcards reproduced on the Internet that have both Japanese and English language text on the front naming the ship. A couple from the 1910s-1920s use HIMS presumably for His Imperial Majesty’s Ship before the ship name. A translator advised me that in one case, HIMS SATSUMA the translation of the Japanese was “Imperial Warship SATSUMA”. The later ones from the 1930s of which several examples were found say HIJMS but the Japanese text is just “Great Japan Warship (name)”(Dai Nippon gunkan....). Based on the style the postcards seem to be from only one or two publishers, as there are several examples also online of postcards of the Japanese warships with no prefix in the English text. Speculation would be that the ajapanese producer applied mirror imaging thinks ngbthat English speaking customers would expect a prefix. Brooksindy (talk) 16:44, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

August 2004

TS is missing, which leaves out turbine steamers like the TS Queen Mary - the tables look scary to edit, but could someone who knows how to edit it please add this. - dave souza 21:07, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Update. The Japanese sailor’s cap tallies between the wars also used Great Japan Warship, 大日本軍艦 though read right to left.Brooksindy (talk) 18:41, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Italian 'Regia Marina'

The Italian Regia Marina adopted the 'R.N.' (Regia Nave) prefix for its ships, and 'R.S.' (Regio Sottomarino) for its submarines. Should this prefixes be included in the table? Any objections? As an example, see the page for the RN Leonardo da Vinci in La Spezia. --Panairjdde 13:38, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Do you have an official reference that confirms this? I note that the Marina Militare's own database of Italian ships [1] contains no ship prefixes. Gdr 01:02, Dec 16 2004 (UTC)

Auxilliary Vessel, Motor-Sailor

An auxilliary vessel is a civilian sailing craft with an internal permanently mounted engine used primarily for in-port maneuvering. On some vessel documents they are refered to as AV Vessel Name.

Similarly, Motor-sailors are sailing craft designed primarily to sail with the motor running, and are occasionally (more rarely) referred as MS Vessel Name.

I'm getting more info from the U.S. Coast Guard, and as soon as I have the specifics from the federal registry I will update the article. - Amgine 23:33, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Another prefix: HMVS

I came here hoping to learn what the "HMVS" in HMVS Cerberus stood for, but it's not in the table. As the article describes her as being built "to defend the Australian colony of Victoria", I'm going to go out on a limb and assume it stands for "Her Majesty's Victorian Ship" and add that to the table. I could easily be wrong; if anybody knows better, please put in what it does stand for, and maybe add it to the Her Majesty's Ship article as well. -- John Owens (talk) 21:47, August 19 2005 (UTC)

Also, having now read the Royal Australian Navy article, it seems that at the time, HMVS ships would have been considered Royal Navy, since there was no RAN yet, and it describes the individual colonial navies as providing only the "brown water" ships, which Cerberus wasn't. Again, I could be terribly wrong. Also, I found that the RAN article was much more informative & relevant than the Military of Australia article which the table had linked to. -- John Owens (talk) 22:02, August 19 2005 (UTC)

From the articles in wikipedia and on the web, when the colonies began to build their own ships, Victoria called it's first ironclad the HMVS Cerebus. See Colonial navies of Australia.Journeyman 05:59, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

M/S

What does this one mean? It's given as an example, but not explained.. --24.26.178.224 01:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Motorship, as is stated. BoH 20:49, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Starwars

Can the Starwars entries be deleted? I don’t see the point in adding fictional prefixes. BoH 20:49, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed and done. anonymous6494 18:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Additional Prefixes

I have two prefixes that can be added to the list, however am not sure of their correct meanings of translations. The first is the Naval prefix for Romania, this is either ROS or RS, RS meaning Romanian Ship, but not sure of the ROS meaning. The second is the american HSV as in HSV-2 Swift which is high speed vessel, I was unsure if and where this should be included. The final one is that for South Korea, this is written as ROKS, which i believe is Republic of Korea Ship. But am unable to confirm.

Additionally, should such prefixes as DDG, FFG, CVS etc be included, or are they dealt with in a different article? JonEastham 11:21, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

HSV is an abbreviation rather than a prefix for a number of named ships, compare with British Motor Torpedo Boats where MTB 102 would be referred to as "HM MTB 102" HM being "His Majesty's". GraemeLeggett 11:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

DDG, etc. are Hull classification symbols. —wwoods 17:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

RRS (UK)

I have removed the 'not currently in use' note from the RRS entry (in the UK section) since the British Antartic Survey operate ships with the RRS title

Example at http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/Living_and_Working/Transport/Ships/RRS_Ernest_Shackleton.php

195.92.168.164 17:45, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Bulgaria

What is the prefix for the Bulgarian Navy? – Zntrip 00:52, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

sts??

The ship i sail on is titled As "STS Leeuwin II"

thats Sail Training Ship, should it be included or not, u have classified the others as "merchant navy" i'm not sure but yeah, if it should be included, please do — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhoj1991 (talk • contribs) 07:37, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

slash

The introduction mentions, Sometimes a slash is used to separate the letters, as in "M/S". Should it additionally say that the slash has no particular meaning? Or does the slash have meaning? Is an S/V a bigger, more important boat than an SV? —EncMstr 18:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Italian Navy Joke

There is a joke that generally states that the initals on Italin warships were IMB (standing for It-sa my boat!). Seriously, did these initials actually get used? Expatkiwi 19:15, October 26 2007 (PDT) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.169.176.253 (talk) 02:16, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

"The US Ship Flattop"

Do writers ever write like this in the USA, like "HM Ship Ark Royal"? 202.89.153.149 (talk) 07:42, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

I've never seen it, but the Brits are a bit finicky about the correct usage of their language. Can't imagine why... ;D And most news weenies are lucky to know "USS" isn't part of her name. Trekphiler (talk) 02:06, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The use of HM Ship is not unusual in reference works, literature and transcripts of RN communications but tends to use the plural of ships (e.g. HM Ships 1, 2 and 3) rather than the singular as in the example given in the question. One can see it used on the RN website at the following link (line 2, 2nd paragraph). --MothProofLemming (talk) 15:44, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Correct flags?

Wouldn't it be more correct to have the naval flags here, instead of the national flags, in the list of military ships' prefixes? John Anderson 12:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

• I agree on this. It seems to make much more sense that an article about naval prefixes should use the naval ensigns. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.218.101.178 (talk • contribs) 00:59, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

China?

no prefix for China? Akinkhoo (talk) 12:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering the same thing. IIRC, they don't use them internally either, but the NATO designation would be nice at least. --Grahamdubya (talk) 23:41, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Call Jon Stewart?

"USNS" is described as "USN owned, civilian crews". I've seen them described as USN-chartered, which seems to be covered by USNV. Or has it changed since WW2/Korea (since it was Morison who said it, IIRC)? Trekphiler (talk) 02:10, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

A quick look at Military Sealift Command, to which all or nearly all of these belong, shows that USNS is correct for MSC whether owned or chartered. RobDuch (talk) 05:46, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

References, Sources, Citations?

Hi all, I just read this article first time today (and ammended some bits). I believe is's a good one, except for the fact that lacks adequate references and sources for most of the info, as well as inline citations that would help ensure verifiability.
Can please those editors that contributed most of the info please help to provide them?
Many Thanks & Kind regards, DPdH (talk) 03:35, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

The article is a bit of a hotchpotch. Both naval and merchant sections are confusing. On naval prefixes there is no consistency between national language and English language usages - they are variously put in different columns or are missing without comment (and there are of course many not yet included).

On the merchant side, I suspect several of the entries do not reflect any widespread use (a few look like abbreviations that particular writers/databases may have adopted for convenience - I don't think that such should be included here - but some such may have started out that way may well have come into wider use, typically for modern ship types); some are very obscure. Perhaps the best way to move this forward would be for previous editors to first add their citations, then questionable inclusions can be discussed here. And new entries with citations only? Opinions welcomed.

Meanwhile, I have deleted SD (Serco Denholm) as based on a misunderstanding, and ISV (International Space Vehicle) which looks like vandalism. Davidships (talk) 12:22, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Timeline

When did all of this start? It seems to me I read some time ago that this is a fairly recent development -- last 200 years or so -- and should not be used prior to the time of adoption. CsikosLo (talk) 14:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Swedish Navy and Royal Navy both use HMS

I have made a post on the SHIPS wikiproject about both the Royal navy and Swedish navy using the prefix HMS. There does not seem to be a clear policy on the English wiki on how to describe Swedish Ships , the Swedish Navy article says that in English HSwMS is used to avoid confusion with British Royal Naval vessels but that is not what is done on here. My full post can be found here and i would welcome any input anyone could give on this matter. Thanks BritishWatcher (talk) 17:23, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

If HMS is the official Swedish designation, but HSwMS is what's used in English to avoid confusion, all that's needed here is a little clarification. I have edited the entry. Ed Oppty (talk) 15:49, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

RFA

A word of caution, RFA may not necessarily stand for Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the British Army had a number of ships prefixed RFA, which stood for Royal Field Ambulance (reference here). Thus ships named RFA Maine were not Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships. Mjroots (talk) 09:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Re-reading the source, should the prefix be RFAS? Mjroots (talk) 10:04, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Since some sources say they were operated by the Admiralty, they could be operated under the Fleet Auxiliary and also be Royal Field Ambulance ships. Tricky. GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:02, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

RFA Maine was apparently operated by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Still not sure about creating a redirect from the RFAS title though. Is it that likely a search term? Mjroots (talk) 21:37, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Soviet Union?

What did the former USSR use? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Walterego (talk • contribs) 16:14, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Royal Canadian Sea Cadets

In the Canadian section, I wished to add SCTS (Sea Cadet Training Ship)/NECM (Navire école des cadets de la Marine) used on ships used for training sea cadets, usually on Sea Cadet Summer Training Centres for Royal Canadian Sea Cadets. Ctjj.stevenson (talk) 15:25, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

CPS ?

While researching HMS/SS Montclare, I came across sources listing it as CPS Montclare. Since it was owned by Canadian Pacific Steamships, I'm guessing Canadian Post Ship, Canadian Packet Ship or Canadian Passenger Ship. Does anyone know definitively? Please add to this articles. --J Clear (talk) 19:09, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I guess it could also be for Canadian Pacific Steamships, too. --J Clear (talk) 19:13, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Iran

[2] - this is an Iranian ship so does that mean the ship prefix for Iran is "IS"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.140.250.54 (talk) 08:52, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Venezuela

Where does the uncited ARBV as a ship prefix for Venezuelan warships come from? It is not used by the Venezuelans (well, they wouldn't use an abbreviation for "vessel" in English in any case). They seem to use "AB" or sometimes "BAB" (Buque del Armada Bolivariano). Davidships (talk) 15:30, 16 March 2013 (UTC)

SSS and USC&GS prefixes

Could some editor please add prefix SSS (Segelschulschiff) as in SSS Gorch Fock to the three German sections in the National or Military prefixes ? Segelschulschiff was used by the German Navy in all historic periods. I tried it with no success, as my English is not so good.

Please also add to NOAA (US) section the prefix USC&GS U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey (ship). Thank you. Tjlynnjr (talk) 05:15, 25 August 2013 (UTC).

Also needed U.S. National Geodetic Survey q.v. predecessor and successor agencies of NOAA. Ship prefixes: USCS (United States Coast Survey (Ship) and USC&GS United States Coast & Geodetic Survey (Ship). Attempted edit again, but failed. Tjlynnjr (talk) 22:47, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Russian Empire prefix

This photo album of the Russian imperial family shows what appears to be a prefix accompanying the name of the warships (https://www.flickr.com/photos/149552988@N02/40898879340/in/album-72157667925795507/). I cannot read Russian so if anyone can translate the captions that would be great. Wolcott (talk) 07:58, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Those are not prefixes, but ship types. Top to bottom the ships are: Лин.кор. "Цесаревичъ", Лин.кор. "Слава", кр.1р. "Богатырь".

The first two are "Лин.кор." (short for "Линейный Корабль", "Ship of the Line") – an equivalent of English term "Battleship".

The third one is a "кр.1р" (short for "Крейсер 1-го ранга", "1-st rank cruiser") – equivalent of "Protected Cruiser".

(Neither of) Russian Navy ever had the concept of prefixes --91.211.237.94 (talk) 04:01, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

I see. Thank you for translating. Wolcott (talk) 10:29, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Vietnam naval prefix

I found no reference in modern use of an actuaal "VPNS" naval prefix that seems an english-based adaptation. On the other hand, all Vietnamese vessels currently have the letters "HQ-" before the pennant number — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lupodimare89 (talk • contribs) 08:50, 30 May 2021 (UTC)