Let’s not stop at Boaty McBoatface, it’s time to let the internet rename everything
The British public has done us all a favour and we are forever indebted to them after The Royal Research Ship at the forefront of British naval engineering was named by the public as Boaty McBoatface. The National Environment Research Council thought it would be quite quaint to ask the good and decent public to name the ship. Clearly nothing has ever gone wrong when asking the internet to name things.
And so it was that Boaty McBoatface was christened into existence.
The move was so popular among the pundits, the website crashed.
It is the start of a new movement. The beginning of a new wave.
Here were the top 15 naming suggestions for the boat: I have highlighted the best ones to save you time.
- RRS Boaty McBoatface
- RRS Henry Worsley
- RRS Pillar of Autumn
- RRS David Attenborough
- RRS Boaty McBoatface the return
- RRS Boat
- RRS Pingu
- RRS It’s bloody cold here
- RRS Usain Bolt
- RRS Tiffany Aching
- RRS Red Dwarf
- RRS Tom Crean
- RRS Ice Ice Baby
- RRS Notthetitanic
- RRS Ada Lovelace
In a show of support, here are some things which should also be named or renamed by the public, so that we may be blessed with more Boaty McBoatfaces in the world.
Natural disasters
It seems like the default naming convention for natural disasters is to go with old-timey female names (see: Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Irene, Cyclone Ita, Cyclone Ingrid, Cyclone Joan). I mean they’re all fabulous but these are disasters, couldn’t we come up with more suitable names?
It actually turns out that the system alternates between male and female names. But the history is apparently even better according to Quora user Adnan:
“During the early 20th century, since hurricanes were deadly and notorious, they were usually named after politicians. As there were objections, during the Second World War, the Army and Navy meteorologists started naming tropical cyclones after their girlfriends and wives. Even this led to severe criticism. Since 1953, US started using female names. The practice came to an end in 1979 when the US Natural Weather Service and the World Meteorological Organisation developed a systematic way of naming cyclones in the beginning of the year, alternating male and female names, arranged in an alphabetical order.”
So it seems some do get named after men, we just never hear about them. Like the 2007 Cyclone George in Western Australia. Cyclone George. Really now.
We need to take this one step further and follow in the footsteps of the Scottish, who nicknamed a storm “Hurricane Bawbag”. Bawbag is a Scots word for scrotum I’ll have you know and is also slang for an annoying or irritating person. Example of it used in a sentence: Tony Abbott is a bawbag. The name trended on Twitter and became one of the top trending hashtags worldwide.
Allow the public to name natural disasters, it should be our right.
Medicare
I know it’s probably an amalgamation of ‘medicine’ and ‘care’ but with the government trying to attack this universal health care right of ours, it needs a new re-branding.
Some suggestions:
‘Free Health no $$$$$’ — this is so that Americans can better imagine what the world looks like with a socialist healthcare system.
‘Staying Alive’ — it would even already have its own theme song
‘CareMeds’ — the ol’ switcharoo
‘Magical Socialist System’ let’s try it out why not?
‘Get On The Meds’ — for the youth.
WestConnex
What is a Connex? Is it supposed to sound like connects? It’s terrible! The public could do a much better job of this.
DisConnex.
The Vocal
It’s not too late to change this website’s name, HAVE YOUR SAY.
Donald Trump
John Oliver had a crack at it recently with the ‘Make Donald Drumpf again” campaign. But we can take this one step further. I know we can do better than Donald Trump. Some suggestions below:
Donaldo McTumpy
Don Got Trumped
Donald Glover Childish Gambino Trump
Doonold Tramp
Bad Man
Boaty McBoatface (it honestly works everywhere)
Former Republican Candidate (Retiree)
Kanye’s next child/album
Kanye is no stranger to opening up the creative process, and his latest album is a working progress since he’s always fixing songs on it. He also likes to have the most unique names imaginable. With names like North and Saint for his children and The Life of Pablo and the upcoming Turbo Grafx 16 for his albums, Kanye needs to try something completely new and whacky. He might not be so keen for the public to name his children, so we’ll focus on his albums instead. Especially if Turbo Grafx 16 can make the cut, then maybe we need to step in.
Alternative suggestions for his next album:
“Album”
“Album: the sequel”
“The Death of Pablo”
“My Dark Beautiful Twisted Album”
“Tidal”
“Jay-Z”
“fuck the fashion industry: 95 songs against Armadillo Shoes”
Andrew Bolt
Nah sorry, it’s too late to re-brand this sinking ship. The time has come (again) to try and replace him with a platypus instead.
Originally published at The Vocal
