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List of U.S. military vessels named after living Americans

The naming of United States Navy vessels after living people was common in the earliest years of American history, but as the 20th century began, the Navy had firmly established a practice of naming ships for people only after they had died. In 1969, a Navy panel formally decreed that warships would no longer be named after living persons.

That lasted until 1974, when President Richard Nixon announced the naming of an aircraft carrier after United States representative Carl Vinson. Over the next half-century, the Navy named more ships for living people than it had in the previous two centuries. From October 2020 to March 2023, the Navy named a ship for a living person every eight months, a pace unseen since 1776.

U.S. Navy ships are named by the secretary of the Navy under U.S. law, explicitly until 1925 and implicitly since.

No ships were named for living former Navy secretaries until 2001; since then, every Navy secretary save one has named a warship for a living predecessor, accounting for more than one-quarter of the ships they named for living people.

No one has named more U.S. ships for living people than Ray Mabus, who did so eight times during his service as secretary from 2009 to 2017. "I think it's...important, when we can, to honor people who are still with us and thank them for what they did," Mabus said in 2016.

The U.S. Navy generally announces the name of a ship some time before it is launched, and well before it is accepted for purchase and commissioned into active service.

List of ships

The following ships received their names while their namesakes were alive. The list includes several ships whose namesakes died before the ships were commissioned.

1770s

1790s

  • Two ships were named for John Adams while he was serving as America's second president:
  • , a 28-gun frigate, was launched in New York on June 8, 1799.
  • , a 24-gun frigate, was launched in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 5, 1799.

1800s

  • was commissioned in 1807, the first of three ships named for James Madison before he died on June 28, 1836.

1810s

1820s

  • was a 14-gun schooner launched in 1812.

1830s

1850s

1900s

  • was commissioned in 1900; John Philip Holland, pioneer of submarine design, died August 1914.

1970s

1980s

1990s

  • was named in 1994; former President Ronald Reagan died in June 2004, eleven months after the ship was commissioned in July 2003.
  • was named in 1995; Bob Hope, veteran of USO shows spanning 50 years, died in 2003.
  • was named in 1998 for former President and Navy submariner Jimmy Carter. Carter died in December 2024, 19 years after the ship was commissioned.

2000s

  • was named in January 2001; Paul Nitze, former Secretary of the Navy, died in October 2004, before the ship was commissioned.
  • was named on December 15, 2001, in honor of the Mustin family that devoted more than a century to U.S. Naval service. Vice Admiral Henry C. Mustin died in April 2016, 13 years after the ship was commissioned, and Lieutenant Commander Thomas M. Mustin died in July 2022.
  • was named in December 2002 for former President and naval aviator George H. W. Bush. Bush died in November 2018, 9 years after his ship was commissioned.
  • was named in October 2006; Gerald R. Ford, former President and carrier officer, died in December 2006, before the ship was commissioned.
  • was named on November 27, 2006, for retired Rear Admiral Wayne E. Meyer, acclaimed as the father of the Aegis combat system. Meyer died in September 2009 a few weeks before the ship was commissioned.
  • was named on January 8, 2009, five days after John Warner, former Navy petty officer, former Marine Corps officer, former Secretary of the Navy, and former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, retired from the U.S. Senate.

2010s

  • USNS John Glenn (T-ESD-2) was named on January 4, 2012, for astronaut and politician John Glenn, who died in 2016.
  • was named on February 10, 2012, for Gabby Giffords, former member of the House of Representatives from Arizona who survived an assassination attempt in 2011. Navy Secretary Mabus chose the name.
  • was named on May 7, 2012, for Thomas Hudner, retired Naval officer and recipient of the Medal of Honor. Hudner died on November 13, 2017.
  • was named on May 23, 2012, for Paul Robert Ignatius, former Secretary of the Navy and commissioned July 27, 2019. Ignatius died on November 6, 2025 just shy of his 105th birthday and over six years after the ship's commissioning.
  • was named on January 6, 2016, for John Lewis, a politician and civil rights activist. Lewis died in 2020.
  • was named on January 14, 2016, for Hershel W. Williams, a Marine warrant officer and Medal of Honor recipient. Williams died in 2022.
  • was named on April 11, 2016, for Carl M. Levin, a former United States senator from Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The contract for the ship, along with the name, was announced in a press release from General Dynamics, parent company of Bath Iron Works, on March 31, 2016. Levin died on July 29, 2021.
  • , slated for commissioning in 2024, is to be named for Harvey C. Barnum, Jr., a retired Marine Corps officer and recipient of the Medal of Honor, as announced by Mabus on July 28, 2016.

2020s

See also

Further reading

References