In the vast ocean of government datasets that I trawl through, I am always on the lookout for moments where people express themselves, leaving behind their own little datum of personality.
These tiny expressions of creativity show up all over public datasets. Air traffic controllers choose funny names for airplane navigation waypoints. Rejected vanity license plate registrations turn up in state motor vehicle databases. The names we pick for our dogs appear in local licensing databases, and the Social Security Administration even publishes the most popular names we give our children. And if you own a boat, you get to name that too.
I went through several years’ worth of NOAA vessel traffic data and pulled a sample of more than 50,000 boat names that were broadcast via Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmitters, which are typically found on larger and commercial vessels. The collection of names is chock full of clever puns, dirty jokes, and references to TV shows, movies, songs, and mythological figures. These names also offer glimpses of the wealth and professions of the people who own a boat.
**⛵️🔎 Search all 50,000 boat names, browse by category, or hit random and see what floats to the top 👇🏻 **
Most commercial vessels 65 feet and over are required to broadcast their precise location and identity using AIS (which lets me make these cool maps), but plenty of recreational boaters broadcast anyway, by choice. These names were collected from NOAA’s Marine Cadastre “broadcast points” vessel traffic data. NOAA captures AIS data from terrestrial stations along US waterways, so any boat transmitting AIS within range of those stations may show up in the data may show up in this data, though the vast majority don’t transmit a vessel name. Boat owners don’t necessarily have to submit these names to NOAA — AIS vessel names aren’t a comprehensive government registry of boat names. Out of roughly 150,000 unique boats I sampled, only about 50,000 had names.
There are a lot of different kinds of boats in this data, but recreational “pleasure craft” make up about 43% of the boats, followed by cargo ships at 14%. There are also fishing boats, tugs and towboats, passenger ships and ferries, as well as military and search and rescue vessels.
About 12% of US households — roughly 14.5 million — were estimated to own or co-own a recreational boat in 2018, according to a US Coast Guard survey.
So who owns boats in the US? The latest edition survey of this survey, from 2018, tells us more about this group. Of boat-owning households, 82.9% were white, while 0.8% were Black or African American.
Boat owners’ lives are reflected in their vessels’ names. Owning a boat is not cheap — yearly expenses can run between $15,000 and $40,000.
That leads to plenty of names your favorite hedge fund manager might slap on a yacht: LIQUID ASSETS, BLUE CHIP III, PORT FOLIO, TRADE DESK, RISK & REWARD, MUTUAL FUN, 401(PLAY).
Lawyers and judges at sea might use these names: LAW DAWG, PRO BONO, MOTION GRANTED, CASE CLOSED, OVERRULED, TESTIMONY, NAUT2GUILTY, and DUE DILIGENCE.
And plenty of names your doctor or surgeon might pick: The CADUCEUS is a well-known symbol of medicine (though the traditional medical symbol is the Rod of ASCLEPIUS). A neurologist probably used SPIKE AND WAVE, then there’s SEROTONIN and the fisherman’s favorite feel-good hormone, ENDORFIN. If you call the DOC ON THE BAY, always remember to follow your DOCTOR’S ORDERS.
Feeling Knotty
There’s no shortage of spicy boat names. You’ll find lots of naughty-nautical wordplay like NAUTI-BOY and GET KNOTTY. There’s LOVE MACHINE 7, SEA SLUT II, and SCREAMING O.
Maybe you’ll see HOOTER PATROL III, FRISKY LADY or THICK CHICK looking for some AFTERNOON DELIGHT.
You can also find WET DREAM, WETTER THE BETTER and WET TUSH.
Books
Some captains draw inspiration from a more highbrow source like classic literature: the protagonist of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, SANTIAGO, Don Quixote’s GOOD OL SANCHO,
Mark Twain’s TOM SAWYER (or a Rush reference?) and HUCK FINN II, the Soviet sub in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for RED OCTOBER, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol gives us MARLEY'S GHOST, Beowulf’s monster GRENDEL, a nod to Steinbeck’s East of Eden: TIMSHEL,
Pushkin’s Eugene ONEGIN, and King Arthur’s ship PRYDWEN.
As a Tolkien fan, I wasn’t surprised to see lots of references to The Lord of the Rings: Your favorite wizard GANDALF (aka
MITHRANDIR) and his horse SHADOWFAX, and from the realm of the elves LADY GALADRIEL II, RIVENDELL, ARWEN, and IDRIL.
And don’t forget the HOBBIT’s hero, BILBOAT BAGGINS, and his PRECIOUS.
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Some famous vessels from film make appearances: Alien’s space freighter NOSTROMO,
Steve ZISSOU’s research ship BELAFONTE in The Life Aquatic, and Jack Sparrow’s BLACK PEARL. Spielberg’s JAWS gave us the famous line “you’re gonna need A BIGGER BOAT.” And someone decided to name their boat after the German submarine film DAS BOOT (German for “the boat”).
There’s also Kubrick’s STRANGELOVE, Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION, Miyazaki’s SPIRITED AWAY, Dorothy’s RUBY SLIPPERS, and Citizen Kane’s ROSEBUD.
Movie quotes make appearances, too:
The Princess Bride’s INCONCEIVABLE, Ice Cube’s line BYE FELICIA from Friday, and Star Wars fans will recognize ALMOST THERE. Names from the Star Wars universe are everywhere, with THE MANDALORIAN, KESSEL RUN, Wedge Antilles’ RED TWO, THE DARKSIDE, and many characters like CHEWBACCA, YODA, and LANDO.
A three-hour tour
Seafaring nerds of all stripes have also tapped into their favorite sci-fi titles for nautical inspiration: Doctor Who’s THE TARDIS, Star Trek’s IMPULSE POWER, HOLODECK 3, and Captain Picard’s famous line MAKE IT SO.
Gilligan’s Island featured the boat behind that ill-fated three-hour tour — the S.S.MINNOW. Other favorite TV shows popped up as well including PARTY OF FIVE,
THE OFFICE,
UGLY BETTY,
HAPPY DAYS, and FANTASY ISLAND.
Festivus for the rest of us
The TV show I found referenced most often was Seinfeld: You can find boats named after Seinfeld characters ELAINE,
KRAMER, and
THE “HELLO NEWMAN”.
Deeper cuts include NO SOUP FOR YOU, MARBLE RYE,
Frank Costanza’s SERENITY NOW and FESTIVUS, and MASTER OF MY DOMAIN, a nod to one of the show's best episodes.
NerdboxFor this post, I processed a small sample of broadcast point data from NOAA's Marine Cadastre Vessel Traffic dataset. There are 17 years worth of daily AIS broadcast point data (about 300 GB per year). I thought 50,000 was a large enough sample to capture the range and variety of names in this data.
I built a Jupyter notebook (Python) to process the data and analyze the names, and I used Claude Code to help categorize the names and build the interactive data browser.
You can download the data used for this project here.
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- Jon Keegan
Bluesky: @jonkeegan.com