The first ship to transit the enlarged Panama Canal recently was the COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA
Fairly apt, I suppose.
But the vogue of putting a company name followed by, well almost anything, simply shows an industry devoid of any imagination when it comes to names of ships.
At one time you could learn a thing or two about places in a particular country, famous people, rivers, tribes, or even Latin names for shells.
But now the whole industry has become so dumbed down that I guess a 5-year old has now been put in charge of coming up with ships' names (Boaty McBoatface illustrates this point perfectly).
COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA is perhaps one of the most absurd of this craze, probably on an equal footing to the 'text speak' that's crept in too - NAVIG8, GENER8 and so on.
Someone once said that it was to underpin the 'brand' so that clients around the world would identify with a particular company more easily.
Well I'm sorry. If people are too stupid to put 2+2 together, then they shouldn't have left school.
In the OCL days, ships were named with the suffix 'BAY' and became known as "the Bay boats". Everyone knew what they were, and that was fine. Then P&O merged with Nedlloyd to create a fleet of ships with a dreadful prefix.
In the days prior to Nedlloyd merging many Dutch companies, ships had a suffix of 'Kerk' - Serooskerk, Laarderkerk, Westerkerk and so on. Others were prefixed STRAAT or NEDER. People in the industry knew exactly what ships they were and what company they were dealing with.
Sadly we're now in an age where we aren't allowed to think for ourselves. The shipping industry is now a business that seems to be run by accountants who, as Monty Python pointed out many years ago, "are too boring to be of interest."
Come on people! Be more imaginative! COSCO SHIPPING PANAMA?... yawn!