Naming
On 29 November 1995, on a visit to the United Kingdom, President Bill Clinton announced to both Houses of Parliament that the new ship would be named after former British Prime Minister and Honorary Citizen of the United States, Sir Winston Churchill. It would make it technically the first warship of the United States Navy to be named after a non-American citizen since 1975, and the first destroyer and only the fourth US warship named after a British citizen.
Other US warships named after Britons were Alfred, an armed merchantman named after King Alfred the Great; Raleigh, a continental frigate, named after Sir Walter Raleigh (though three later USS Raleighs—and two Confederate warships—would be named for the North Carolina city, which did not exist at the time) and Effingham, named after The 3rd Earl of Effingham who resigned his commission rather than fight the Americans during the American Revolutionary War. The former frigate Harold E. Holt was also named after a person from a country in the Commonwealth of Nations, the ill-fated Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt, however, this is the first ship to be named for a modern British hero, and British Prime Minister.
Read more about this topic: USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81)
Famous quotes containing the word naming:
“See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul—half a drop! ah, my Christ!—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!—
Yet will I call on him!—O, spare me, Lucifer!—
Where is it now? ‘T is gone; and see where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!—
Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!”
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
“Husband,
who am I to reject the naming of foods
in a time of famine?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)