It's time to play
the Nautical Name Game. Princess Cruises picked Crown Princess as
the name for its next Caribbean-based ship. Can you name another
ship with the word crown on its hull?
Answer: The
Norwegian Crown.
Norwegian Cruise
Line and Princess share more than one ship name. The Star, the Sun
and the Sea are common monikers.
Last year, Royal
Caribbean International and Carnival Cruise Lines revealed they
would use the name Freedom -- as in the Carnival Freedom and the
Freedom of the Seas -- within less than one week of each
other.
"I guess that's
emulation," said Bob Dickinson, Carnival's CEO. But, he added, "It's
Carnival Freedom, not Freedom. So there's no chance of being
misidentified."
There's the Jewel
of the Seas and the Norwegian Jewel. The Seabourn Legend and the
Carnival Legend. The Norwegian Majesty and the Majesty of the Seas.
The Seven Seas Mariner and the Mariner of the Seas.
Granted, there
are some ship names out there that haven't been copied. Carnival has
the Ecstasy and the Fascination. And only Holland America Line uses
a dam suffix on each of its ships, a Dutch seafaring
tradition.
Ship renaming is
a tradition that goes back, in HAL's case, 130 years. The current
Rotterdam is actually the sixth in a line of Rotterdams. There have
been three Nieuw Amsterdams and two regular Amsterdams.
The Noordam,
which left service last fall to go to Thomson Holidays in the U.K.,
will be replaced by a larger ship, which will be named the
Noordam.
Recycling a
popular ship name is what Princess has done with the Crown. Ditto
the Pacific Princess, which now is the name of a ship Princess
purchased in 2002. (It was a former Renaissance Cruises vessel. And
did anyone get confused over the R1, R2, R3 and so on?).
Cunard put a
numerical notation on its liners to differentiate the Queen Mary
and the Queen Mary 2. On the other hand, the venerable line has had
two Caronias and four Carinthias.
And the Norway
was the third France, if you know what I mean.
But whats in a
name, really? Executives said it's
important that the brand name sticks in the consumers
consciousness.
"Cruise companies
can't own names like Navigator and Voyager," said Radisson Seven Seas
CEO Mark Conroy. "So you might gnash your teeth, but you can't do
much about it."
"We [tagged RSSC's
ships with the Seven Seas brand] so, hopefully, people would
remember the company name," Conroy said.
So here's to the
unique. Like Crystal Cruises ships -- unless you cross language
barriers.
In that case,
there's the Crystal Symphony and MSC Cruises' Sinfonia.
To contact
reporter Rebecca Tobin, send e-mail to rtobin@travelweekly.com.