Historic Names


(Credit to Rick Zitarosa, Vice President/Historian Navy Lakehurst Historical Society and the Airship Heritage Trust for information. Additions and corrections to this page can be sent to us via our contact us page)

The naming of airships and vessels in general has always generated much passion and opinion. Typically they are named for people (real or famous fictional) or places. There are discussions about whether airships are a 'she' or not given that in maritime history, there is a tradition of naming ships after women.

Goodyear steered a very safe course for about 70 years by naming their airships after Americas Cup winners (names like Mayflower, Volunteer, Vigilant, Columbia, Defender, Puritan, Resolute, Reliance, Enterprise, Rainbow, Ranger, Stars and Stripes, America etc.) Europa for the airship that was in Europe, was an exception and a nod to the new ship's operating territory. Spirit Of Akron was symbolic of the company's LTA program moving forward in a new era hostile takeover attempts. They are now in Spirit mode (Spirit Of Goodyear, Spirit Of Innovation, Spirit Of America.) Their most recent fleet addition was named in a public contest.

The early Zeppelins were named after places and people. Some of them were the LZ 7 Deutschland; LZ 8 Deutschland II ; LZ 11 Viktoria Luise ; LZ 17 Hansa ; LZ 17 Sachsen; LZ 120 Bodensee; LZ 121 Nordstern; LZ 126 Los Angeles; LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin; LZ 129 Hindenburg and LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II.

The Zeppelin NT's are


Among the Lebaudy airships (a manufacturer at the turn of the last century) were the Republique, Russie, Liberte, Austrichienne, Morning Post, Capitaine Marchal, Lieutenant Selle de Beauchamp, and Tissandier.

There was considerable controversy in the naming of the big American rigids - not so much in the case of the Shenandoah (said to mean daughter of the stars in Algonquian), but very much so with the Los Angeles, Akron and Macon. Intense political lobbying went on for the names by the states and cities in question as well as for which dignitaries would actually get to do the naming.

This website, maintained by the Airship Heritage Trust gives quite some insight into the effort that went into coming up with names for the British Rigid airships. Aside from the R34 that was the first east-west crossing of the Atlantic by air and the two largest British airships were known un-inspiringly as the R100 and R101.

Airshipsonline: Nonclamenture of Airships

Italy built its fair share of airships at the start of last century. The most famous are the Italia and the Norge, both used on expeditions to the North Pole. Less well known are the Forlanini Airships, not all of which were named, but those that were are The Leonardo Da Vinci, Citta Di Milano and Omnia Dir.

A current SkyShip600L is named Santos Dumont after one of the earliest airship inventors and pilots.