Ship Name Histories - Database of histories of ship names beginning with letter V.

Name Origin: In Norse mythology a son of Odin, and god of the returning light and the rising forces of Nature in spring.

Valkyrien

Name Origin: Valkyre.  In Norse mythology the Valkyres or Shield maidens were heavenly maidens in the service of Odin, who descended upon the battlefield mounted on cloud steeds, and thence bore the fallen heroes to Walhalla, the seat of the gods.

Valmy

Name Origin: - Village in the Marne department, where the French under Kellermann defeated the Prussian under the Duke of Brunswick, September 20^th 1792.

Name Origin: Captain of the 8^th Regiment of the line, killed during the war with Turkey in the attack on Grivitza, August 30^th 1877.

Name Origin: A distinguished hydrographer.

Name Origin: Johan van Galen, Dutch naval officer.  When on July 8^th 1652, Holland declared war against England, he was sent overland to take command of the Dutch squadron of 14 sail in the Mediterranean.  With four of these he blockaded the British ships under Admiral Richard Badiley at Leghorn and proceeded to intercept the expected reinforcements, under Commodore Appleton, defeating the latter with heavy loss off Elba on August 28^th.  Van Galen succumbed to his wounds after the action, being succeeded by the younger Tromp.

Name Origin: a distinguished hydrographer.

Vanguard

Name Origin: chief town of the province of Como.  Here Garibaldi defeated the Austrian in May 1859.

Name Origin: A celebrated navigator, born 1469 died 1524.  King Manuel of Portugal sent him in 1497 with three ships, manned by 160 men, to reach India by the newly discovered Cape of Good Hope.  He reached the Cape in four months, and sailing up the east coast of Africa, touched at Quiloa, Mombasa, and Melinde in the spring of 1498, and arrived at Calicut, on the Malabar Coast, in May of that year.  Having returned safely to Lisbon, the King gave him the title of Admiral of India, and sent him out again in 1502 with twenty ships to establish trading stations along the discovered shores.  This Vasco da Gama did at Mozambique and other points on his route, clearing the seas of the pirates, which infested them, and returned to Portugal, where he was loaded with honours and created Marquis of Videgueyra.  In 1524 he was appointed first Viceroy of India, and died at Cochin on Christmas Day the same year after restoring and extending Portuguese influence in those regions.

Name Origin: The discoverer of the Pacific, born 1475, died 1517.  He left Spain for the new world to escape his creditors, and together with Vincente J. Pinzon, discovered Yucatan in 1507.  In 1510 he joined an expedition to Darien, where he seized upon the government during an insurrection.  In 1513 he crossed the Isthmus and was the first European to set eyes on the Pacific Ocean, the shores of which he claimed possession of in the name of Spain.  Replaced by Edrarias Silva as Governor of the colony of Darien, he successfully continued the explorations in the neighbourhood, but fell a victim to Pedraria’s jealously, who had him imprisoned and executed.

Vasilefs Georgios

Vaucluse

Name Origin: - A department of South-eastern France, and a valley with a spring of that name not far from Avignon, which the great Italian poet Petrarch, who lived there for a while, has celebrated in his poems.

Name Origin: A river flowing through Romania.

Name Origin: Scout, vedette.

Veloce

Name Origin: - Swift.

Veloss

Velox

Vendemiaire

Name Origin: - “Month of vintage.”  The first month of the New Calendar instituted by the First French Republic on September 22^nd 1792, ad, which continued in use until Napoleon, reintroduced the Gregorian Calendar on January 1^st 1806.

Venerable

Vengeance

Ventose

Name Origin: - “month of wind.”  The sixth month of the New Calendar instituted by the First French Republic on Napoleon reintroduced the Gregorian Calendar on January 1^st 1806.

Venus

Vergniaud

Name Origin: - Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud, born 1753, died 1793.  a lawyer and member of the girondist or moderate Republican party during the first French Revolution.  His energy and eloquence soon made him one of the leaders of his party, which for a while swayed the destinies of France.  The Girondists fell before the more violent party, surnamed “The Mountain,” under the leadership of Robespierre, and Vergniaud, together with nineteen of his followers was guillotined on October 21^st 1793.

Verite

Name Origin: - Truth.

Vernon

Vestal

Name Origin: Mount Vesuvius, active volcano on the Bay of Naples.

Vesuvius

Name Origin: Celebrated Venetian Admiral died 1380.  He served in his youth under his uncle, Nicolas Pisani, also distinguished seamen, and in 1377, when the fourth war between Venice and Genoa broke out, was made Commander-in-chief of the Venetian sea forces.  He drove the Genoese from the Adriatic, and captured Cattaro, Sebenico and Arbo from King Louis of Hungary, their ally.  In 1379, his fleet being greatly weakened by infectious diseases, Pisani was lying at Pola when the Genoese fleet, under Lucian Doria, appeared off the harbour.  Though averse to fighting his scruples were overruled by the clamour of his subordinates, and having filled up the vacancies in his crews with landsmen, hurriedly impressed, he sailed out to meet the enemy.  In the battle which ensued Pisani was defeated, and lost 14 ships.  On his return to Venice he was degraded, and flung into the dungeons of St Mare’s.  Here by lay until the Genoese, having captured and fortified the neighbouring island of Chioggia, the populace of Venice demanded his release and reinstatement.  The Government gave way; Pisani was once more placed in command of the fleet, and after a long and arduous siege of six months, succeeded in retaking Chioggia, and capturing the Genoese vessels that had been left to support the garrison June 1380.

Victor Hugo

Name Origin: - Great French poet, dramatist and novelist, born of royalist parents at Besancon in 1802, died 1885.  In 1814 he was elected a member of the Academic franaise, and in 1845 King Louis Philippe appointed him member of the House of Peers.  On the outbreak of the Revolution three years later he became an ardent Republican, adhering to these views for the rest of his life.  On the establishment of the Second Empire he was driven into exile, which he mostly spent in the island of Guernsey.  The downfall of the Empire in 1870 put an end to his exile.

Victoria and Albert

Victorious

Victory

Vidal de Negreiros

Name Origin:Name of the Commandant of Militia at Pernambuco during the war with Holland in the seventeenth century, in which he fought with great distinction.

Name Origin: Surnamed “the Sient.”  In Norse mythology a god and son of Odin, whose death he avenges by killing the Fenris wolf in the last great struggle between the powers of light and darkness at the end of the world.

Name Origin: Apparent.

Vigilant

Vigilante

Name Origin: - Vigilant.

Vigilante

Viking

Name Origin: A near relative of Martin A. Pinzon, and like him a companion of Columbus in the voyage of discovery to America 1492.  In 1499 he had an expedition of exploration along the east coast of South America, and was the first Spaniard to cross the Equator and explore the coast of Brazil.  In 1507, together with Vasco de Balboa, he discovered Yucatan.

Vindictive

Vingesima Quinto de Mayo

Name Origin: Enduring.

Violet

Virago

Name Origin: The capital of the province of Alava, near which town, on June 21^st 1813, the allied Spanish and British troops under the Duke of Wellington totally defeated the French under Marshal Jourdan.

Name Origin: Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, born 1869, son of King Humbert I, whom he succeeded in 1900.

Vivid

Vixen

Name Origin: A town on the Kliasma, and capital of the government of Vladimir.  From the twelfth to the fourteenth century it was the centre of an independent principality of that name.

Name Origin: Powerful.

Name Origin: Attentive.

Name Origin: Imposing.

Name Origin: Chief.  The title was borne by the military governor of the ancient Russian towns.

Name Origin: A Turco-Mongolian race inhabiting North-eastern Russia

Name Origin: Headman of Cossacks.

Name Origin: The greatest rivers of Russia and the longest in Europe, falling into the Caspian Sea.  “Volga” is a Tartar word meaning “river.”

Name Origin: Alessandro, Count of Volta, celebrated Italian physicist; born 1745, died 1827.  He made important discoveries in the science of electricity.  The term “volt” is derived from his name.

Voltaire

Name Origin: - Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (the latter being an assumed name), born 1694, died 1778.  The son of a notary, he was educated by the Jesuits and studied for the Bar, but soon took up literature as a profession. Twice imprisoned in the Bastille for lampooning persons high in authority and for attempted duelling he lived an exile in England from 1726 to 1729.  From 1734 to 1749 he lived at Cirey in Lorraine, the resistance of his friend the Marquise de Chatelet.  After her death, his fame as an author and philosopher having meanwhile spread throughout Europe, he accepted on invitation of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia to come and live at his Court.  This he did, from 1750 to 1753, but as the result of numerous quarrels and ensuing coldness Voltaire left Prussia again in the latter year and settled on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, where he bought the property of Fernez and lived the life of a country gentleman and patron of art and literature until his death, which took place during a visit to Paris.  Voltaire was a prolific writer both in verse and prose, and ranks amongst the foremost masters of classic French style.  A scuffling sceptical spirit marks his philosophy.  A violent enemy of Church orthodoxy in al forms, yet he was not a confirmed atheist.  The unselfish way in which he took up the defence of such as were persecuted by Church and State (Calas, Sirven and Lally) are admirable traits in an otherwise vein and selfish character.

Voltigeur

Name Origin: - Literally, “Leaper.”  Name of the picked men forming one rifle company in each infantry regiment under Napoleon I.  These companies existed until 1868.  Among the guards of Napoleon I and III there were regiments of Voltigeurs.

Name Origin: The Volturnus of the Romans, a river rising in the Abruzzi Mountains, and falling into the Mediterranean between the Gulfs of Gulfs of Gaeta and Naples.

Name Origin: Town on the river Don, and capital of the government of that name.  Peter the Great in 1696 here made a dockyard and began building the first ships for the Russian Navy, destined for the Sea of Azov.  The building of these was carried on so rapidly the two years later 170 great and small were ready.

Name Origin: A Mongolian tribe settled in the Ural Mountains.

Name Origin: A small river on the west coast of Portugal.

Name Origin: Rider, horseman.

Vulcan

Vulture

Name Origin: Explosion.