What's in a name?

3º 50.684s 128º 19.066w

Thu May 02 2019

You know what they say . . . people name their children and their boats. Well, except for my pal Bill Prokes who generally names his truck. Implies an emotional connection.

I’m always interested in the story behind the name when it’s a unique one. Forget the “dream this”, the “wind that” names that are so common that there’s often more than one of them in the same anchorage. I like interesting names, such as Ross and Juli MacDonald’s beautiful motor vessel “Boppy’s Star”. Their story is great! “Strange Byrds” with full time live-aboards Brian and Anna Byrd, some of the most fun people you could ever meet! “Shameless” with live-aboards Carolee and Jay Tyson. They are, AND a total hoot to hang out with!

Then there’s “Cool Change”. Rick and Cindy Patrinellis have always been extremely fond of the Little River Band. As they tell it, they were in an anchorage a few years ago along with a great big boat; a guy dinghies over and asks them about their boat name, they tell him, and he gets all smiley because HE WAS IN THE BAND! Invited them aboard and showered them with all sorts of hospitality.

It never fails - when we’re moored in a marina where folks walk by, they don’t seem to be able to pass without saying the name of our boat out loud. JollyDogs! Rolls off the tongue. Perhaps we got it right. In any case, we didn’t want a name nobody could pronounce. It needed to be easy to understand when heard over the VHF or SSB radio. It needed to project something about us; when we pulled into an anchorage we wanted folks to look towards us, see the name and think, “those folks are probably fun people”.

We do occasionally get hailed by some brain dead knothead calling us something like “jelly roll, or jelly donuts, or jelly stone” or some such. I swear, there’s just no helping some people.

We’re thieves, of course. We saw that name while sailing around St. Johns in the US Virgin Islands. Stopped into a lovely anchorage and took a walk, saw a sign that said “come to JollyDogs, we’ve got the stuff you want”. Well, we didn’t realize we wanted anything besides another cold beer, but we walked a couple miles to the shop, only to discover it was a t-shirt screening business. We didn’t want anything they had, but I really liked the name. Next thing you know we’ve got a pair of Jack Russell Terriers - some of the craziest and most energetic dogs ever to dash around planet Earth. They say dogs are like their people or some such . . . anyway Isabel eventually warmed up to the idea of naming our boat JollyDogs when we finally got her, and Bob’s your uncle!

It’s also good if someone looks at your boat with binoculars to be able to read the name. Fortunately for us, Bill owns a big sign business, is a great artist, and knows how to choose fonts and such so that the name is readable from a great distance. We’ve got a bitchin’ logo on each bow, easy to read from 500 meters with a decent set of 8x40 field glasses.

So there you have it. If you’re a US person and want to document your vessel with the US Coast Guard, you can look in their registry online and see if the name you’d like to use is unique or already taken. There’s no requirement that only one of each name exist, but it’s kind of nice to be the first, isn’t it?

Sure hope you’ve got an interesting story!