Avalon CLs - naming conventions

So far, I've documented 4 Named Avalon CLs, with naming all over the place.

1) Avalon (of Course, the class namesake) - The mystical Land King Arthur ventured to at the end of his life - also said to be an Island

2) Aegis - A type of Shield - (20th cent.) a US Navy combat weapons system.

3) Testudo - A defensive tactical formation ("To Turtle")

4) Apsis - the furthest points in an elliptical orbit or the line connecting said points.

So, can anyone see a naming convention (or 2) between these ships names? One option I can see is 2 represent Islands (Avalon and Apsis - the second being "Islands" at the edges of an orbit), and 2 represent defenses. Anyone seeing any other connection. (other than 3 starting with "A"s?)

Now, the other day a very stupid realization came over me. I was reviewing an old post where someone was proposing names from "Lord of the Rings" for class names. I thought that such wasn't sufficiently mythic to be used with names from the Roman empire or Macedon. But the realization hit me - the POV of these stories is 2000 years in the future (duh!). Anything happening today is as mythic to someone in the Honorverse as the Punic wars is today. A scholar of the future might speak of Hannibal, Schwarzkopf, and Henry the Lionhearted in the same tones, in the conversation. A 2000 year old mainstream religion might follow the sayings and teaching of Surak, And "The Hobbit" might have outsold "Don Quixote".

So while my 20th century eye might be looking to the past to make a connection, might the author(s) be considering a future connection to the names? I realize no one can answer this (other than the Author), but it still is an interesting thought, and one that a good world building author would use.

Theemile wrote:So, can anyone see a naming convention (or 2) between these ships names? One option I can see is 2 represent Islands (Avalon and Apsis - the second being "Islands" at the edges of an orbit), and 2 represent defenses. Anyone seeing any other connection. (other than 3 starting with "A"s?).

I ran into the following situation in the thread about ships built by Carlucci:

SLNS Sharpshooter, formerly designated SLNS Defiance, was a Defiant class pod-laying battlecruiser of the Maya Sector Detachment.

So it could be that there were names on the Honor's List (ship names, never to be retired) that needed to be realized; with the result that there is no logical connection between the meaning of the names.

tlb wrote:

Theemile wrote:So, can anyone see a naming convention (or 2) between these ships names? One option I can see is 2 represent Islands (Avalon and Apsis - the second being "Islands" at the edges of an orbit), and 2 represent defenses. Anyone seeing any other connection. (other than 3 starting with "A"s?).

I ran into the following situation in the thread about ships built by Carlucci:

SLNS Sharpshooter, formerly designated SLNS Defiance, was a Defiant class pod-laying battlecruiser of the Maya Sector Detachment.

So it could be that there were names on the Honor's List (ship names, never to be retired) that needed to be realized; with the result that there is no logical connection between the meaning of the names.

Well - the Honor List being the logical connection, but no other outside logic. Exactly. Or the thought in the back of my head when I was posting was perhaps ships at an (pre-1900 PD) historic battle (Like Wolf 359 in the Star Trek Universe). Good world building, but WE would never find the thread externally.

Theemile wrote:So far, I've documented 4 Named Avalon CLs, with naming all over the place.

1) Avalon (of Course, the class namesake) - The mystical Land King Arthur ventured to at the end of his life - also said to be an Island

2) Aegis - A type of Shield - (20th cent.) a US Navy combat weapons system.

3) Testudo - A defensive tactical formation ("To Turtle")

4) Apsis - the furthest points in an elliptical orbit or the line connecting said points.

So, can anyone see a naming convention (or 2) between these ships names? One option I can see is 2 represent Islands (Avalon and Apsis - the second being "Islands" at the edges of an orbit), and 2 represent defenses. Anyone seeing any other connection. (other than 3 starting with "A"s?)

"Words in Latin"

"Avalon" is said to be of Old Welsh/Old Breton origin, but it first appeared connected to King Arthur in a text in Latin.

I speculated that the Ad Astra-class DNs followed a similar naming convention. We only know of one ship in that class (the lead ship).

Now, the other day a very stupid realization came over me. I was reviewing an old post where someone was proposing names from "Lord of the Rings" for class names. I thought that such wasn't sufficiently mythic to be used with names from the Roman empire or Macedon. But the realization hit me - the POV of these stories is 2000 years in the future (duh!). Anything happening today is as mythic to someone in the Honorverse as the Punic wars is today. A scholar of the future might speak of Hannibal, Schwarzkopf, and Henry the Lionhearted in the same tones, in the conversation. A 2000 year old mainstream religion might follow the sayings and teaching of Surak, And "The Hobbit" might have outsold "Don Quixote".

Yup. Like in The Uplift War, when the uplifted chimp Fiben Bolger looks up to the sky and sees the constellation of the famous hero, The Batman. As for the teachings of Surak... well, that's Futurama's Church of Trek and that led to the Star Trek Wars.

What about classic Golden Age Sci-Fi? In either The Number of the Beast or The Pursuit of Pankera (or both, because they're parallel-universe stories starting at the same point), Heinlein has his characters talk about Sci-Fi authors, then one of them asks about Heinlein.

So while my 20th century eye might be looking to the past to make a connection, might the author(s) be considering a future connection to the names? I realize no one can answer this (other than the Author), but it still is an interesting thought, and one that a good world building author would use.

That's an interesting proposition: they could be a connection that hasn't happened yet. They could all be (for example) old battle tactics and Avalon doesn't have that connection yet for us.