Naming History
Due to the anticipated expansion of the navy, the IJN originally issued numerical designations to every ship. However, the bland numerical designations were unpopular with the officers and crews. The IJN abolished destroyers' numerical designations in August 1928, reverting to names. The reverence held by the Japanese for the arts of war, promoted by the pre-war military governments, led to poetic sounding names for warships. Destroyers were allocated names associated with natural phenomena of weather, sky and sea, e.g., wind (kaze), snow (yuki), rain (ame), clouds (kumo), waves (nami), mist (kiri), frost (shimo), tides (shio), and the moon (tsuki).
Read more about this topic: Japanese World War II Destroyers
Famous quotes containing the words naming and/or history:
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)