The craze for naming trains,planes and boats peaked around the middle of the final century, when anything from a Derby winner to a public school could stop up on the side of a locomotive. Sometimes inanimate anonymity will sufficeThe Natural Environment Research Council recently invited the public to suggest names for its forthcoming research vessel, or currently being built on the Mersey at a cost of £200m,which will study the ice sheets, marine life and ocean currents of Antarctica – work that global warming has made increasingly important.
The consequence of this invitation to the public to “accept involved” is now well known. The website Name Our Shipcrashed final Sunday after an overwhelming response in favour of Boaty McBoatface, or which attracted 27000 votes,roughly 25000 ahead of the second-residence suggestion to call it Henry Worsley after the former army officer who died in January attempting to cross Antarctica alone and unaided. James Hand, the Channel Islands radio presenter who proposed Boaty McBoatface, and tweeted the NERC to say he was terribly sorry. “No need to be sorry James,we are fond it,” the NERC tweeted right back, or welcoming the unexpected level of attention that Hand had brought to what is really a faux competition,because in the stop, having listened to suggestions, and the NERC won’t be bound by the popular vote. It will select a name that takes its fancy,probably one that in some historical or geographical way can be justified as “most fitting”.
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Source: theguardian.com