Ship prefix

A ship prefix is a combination of letters, usually abbreviations, used in front of a civilian ship or man'o'war (naval ship).

Ship prefixes in the United States Navy have consistently been "United States Type", where Type was "Ship", "Sloop", "Bark", and so on. (The types other than "Ship" have fallen out of use.) Hull classification symbols — "BB" for battleships and so on — were haphazard, but in 1907 were standardized by executive order of President Theodore Roosevelt.

The use of ship prefixes is not universal; in particular neither the Third Reich's Kriegsmarine nor the Imperial Japanese Navy seem to have used prefixes, although "DKM" and "HIJMS" respectively are often seen in English works.

Table of Ship Prefixes

Occasionally writers will prefix a ship's name with an abbreviation of its nationality in their own language, such as "IJN" for Teikoku Nihon Kaigun, but that usage is deprecated.

In the Royal Netherlands Navy, "HNLMS" is the prefix in English, a translation of the Dutch original "Hr.Ms." or "Zr.Ms.". "Hr.Ms." should preferably not be used English-language documents; nevertheless it is often seen on the World Wide Web. Until the moment a Dutch naval ship officially enters active service in the fleet, the ship's name is used without the prefix.

United States ships that have not been commissioned in the Navy yet don't hold the title of USS, it holds the title of PCU (Pre-commissioned unit) For example, say a shipyard is building a new aircraft carrier:— The Neversail. From the date the keel is laid to the date it is commissioned, it is called the PCU Neversail. Only after it enters active service in the fleet and is commissioned will it be referred to as the USS Neversail.

Note that while a US ship would be "the USS Neversail", its British equivalent would be "HMS Neversail" (without the "the") since "the Her Majesty's Ship" would be grammatically meaningless.

See also the WikiProject Ships.

External Link

• Warship National Prefixes