What’s in a Name? – Naming Your Boat: Part 2

So much for fellow Piper-boat owners. Here are the stories behind the naming of a few other boats we know.

According to Claire Jensen (from Happy Chance), cruisers* often have “sort of baby boomer names that are often about money – names like Grin and Tonic, No Riff Raff, Oy Oy Saveloy, 50 Shades of Bray or Pimms O’Clock – especially the gin-palacey ones.”

*Cruisers are those white fibre-glass boats, sometimes less-than-affectionately dubbed “yoghurt pots” by those who prefer something with a steel hull that’s a bit more solid (and perhaps more stolid, too).

Narrowboats, she says, often have the names of women, or of couples.

For every narrowboat named after a woman…

… there is another named after something completely different – in this instance, a butterfly

And barges like ours generally have names with personality, probably because the boats themselves have personalities, she thinks. (Their owners too, though she doesn’t say so out loud.)

She has a point. For example, there’s our friend David Watson’s Aqualine barge Elysian; apart from elysian meaning “heavenly”, David went to William Ellis School in Highgate, London, whose alumni are known as Old Elysians.

Colonel David striking a suitably heroic pose on his dinghy on D Pontoon last summer – that’s his Aqualine barge, Elysian, in the background

For another, Alestorm is the barge of Al and Sue Kitching, probably the coolest couple on the T&K Marina.

Al Kitching on his barge “Alestorm” – complete with Jolly Roger

But you’ll see plenty of wide-beams, barges and cruisers named after women or couples. Here’s an example – Dean’s Piper boat is named after his late wife, Angela Dawn.

Boat names often tell their owners’ stories: “Angela Dawn” is named after Dean’s late wife

Simon, whose Dutch barge Vin Rouge is moored on D Pontoon, says he was immediately drawn to the name when he saw it – he was a wine merchant at the time.

Simon’s no longer a wine merchant, but he was when he bought “Vin Rouge”

Lots of cruisers have respectable names, too. Our Scottish friends Kenny and Heather’s Tranen apparently means “stork” in Norwegian (and it’s on the market, should you be interested). Howard and Sarah’s is called Tenacity because when Howard was a young recruit, an officer in the Royal Navy told him he possessed that particular quality; he rushed off to look up the meaning, liked the idea and resolved that one day when he owned his own boat, he would name it that.

I snapped this shot last summer – and yes, that’s a vuvuzela (Zulu noise-maker) that Kenny’s using to announce Tranen’s … erm… brisk approach from the T&K Marina on to the Thames

Christopher’s cruiser came to him with the name Noharo – he was delighted to discover that it means “beautiful journey” in Japanese.

“Noharu” means “beautiful journey” in Japanese

But I’d love to know the backstory behind Anniversary Surprise, also at T&K Marina. (One hopes but somehow doubts that the surprise was a happy one.)