Russian ship naming conventions

The Russian and Soviet Navy's naming conventions were similar to those of other nations. A problem for the non-Russian reader is the need to transliterate the Cyrillic names into the Latin alphabet. There are often several different Latin spellings of the same Russian name

Before the revolution, the Imperial Russian Navy used the following convention

Russian Battleships were named after:

Russian Cruisers were named after

Russian destroyers were named after adjectives e.g. Burnyi = Stormy, Smeliy = Valiant

Named after fish or animals – e.g., Morzh = Walrus, Akula = Shark

The Soviets changed the names of many ships after they took power in 1917

The Soviets assigned a project number to each new design. The numbers were non sequential, submarine designs had numbers 600-900, small combatants 100-200 and large ships 1000 plus. The designs also had covernames, major ship classes were named after birds, e.g., Orlan = Sea eagle, Berkut = Golden eagle, Kreschet = Gyrfalcon. Submarine designs were given fish names, e.g., Akula = Shark, Som = Catfish, etc.

Also see NATO reporting name

NATO assigned its own reporting names to Soviet ships. This was because the official Soviet designation was unknown.

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