List of Spacecraft in The Culture Series - Naming

Naming

The machine intelligences called Minds (and, as a consequence, the Culture starships that they inhabit) usually bear names that do a little more than just identify them. The Minds choose their own names, and thus they usually express something about a particular Mind's attitude, character or aims in their personal life. Warship names are similar in retaining the whimsical nature, though the humour tends to be more cynical and threatening.

Banks composed many of the Culture ships' names very carefully to express the attitude of the ship's Mind, and a few names contain puns where both meanings are appropriate to the ship's attitude. A few of the ship names, like variations on "gravitas" are also installments in running gags.

Some ships' names hint at their purpose, but in a way that is not clear until near the end of the book. For example, Sleeper Service is a sleeper agent whose cover is a suspended animation "sleeper service".

Read more about this topic:  List Of Spacecraft In The Culture Series

Famous quotes containing the word naming:

    See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
    One drop would save my soul—half a drop! ah, my Christ!—
    Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!—
    Yet will I call on him!—O, spare me, Lucifer!—
    Where is it now? ‘T is gone; and see where God
    Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!—
    Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me,
    And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
    Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

    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)

    Husband,
    who am I to reject the naming of foods
    in a time of famine?
    Anne Sexton (1928–1974)