"French Ship Names in Age of Sail?" Topic

I've done a little research on the net, and need to name a few French merchant vessels, sloops, etc.

I see that frequently, as is the custom in English, that "the" is added before the vessels' names. Apparently "le" is the pronoun used for male names in some cases, and "la" is for female names.

It is also interesting to note, that back in the medieval period, which is the time period that I was able to locate some names and information for, the pronouns might be used interchangeably, e.g. male pronouns for female vessel names, and vice versa. Of course, some French names can be used for both sexes, so I am discounting those.

What I'd like to know is if this practice fell out of favor in the 1600's – the early 1800's, and if the pronouns were more likely to be the appropriate gender type for the names used?

Also, for the stern of the vessels, I'd like to know if "le" and "la" are capitalized usually, or left in lower case?

In the examples given in the listings, the pronouns were not capitalized, but I'm not sure if that would still apply, when carving the name for display on the stern of the vessels.

Finally, during this period, do any of you know if vessels were more likely to be named after women, than men, or creatures, etc., or was there a mixture of names used?

Most of the vessels I'm looking to name will be either merchants, sloops, privateers, brigs, etc., so naming conventions for the larger frigates and warships may not apply.

Tough question, all I can give yu is this link to Miniature Trading where you can list all French vessels from the Pirates CSG, I dunno if they did any research but at least the ship names _sound_ realistic ;)

link

Masculine and feminine (German has a third, neutral, gender)… refers to noun gender (English being the rare exception to European languages assigning gender to nouns.) A ship named Formidable would be le Formidable. As to which nouns are masculine and which feminine, you'll have to look them up.

Lowercase for le and la. If the noun begins with a vowel, drop the a or e and insert an apostrophe… so the Orient becomes l'Orient.

As far as I can tell, there wasn't any naming convention during the age of sail. I only know the names of ships of the line, but those might have a descriptive name… which seems the most common (le Formidable), a mythological individual (l'Achille), or a place (le Rhin)

the old boardgame by Avalon Hill Wooden Ships and Iron Men has all the ship names for age of sail.

Standardization of French was established with l'Académie Française ( link ). By the time of Molière, genders were definitely set in stone, even though some of his turns of phrases are just as torturous to us today as Shakespeare's can be.

A copy of the old electronic game is here: link

Here is a PDF of the miniatures game:

link

scroll down until you see the title. PDF looks good!

Wiki to the rescue…

link

Neat website @ancientsgamer but I have to ask, do they have a right to distribute these games?

Yes, "LA" is feminine, "LE" is masculine", and if the first letter of the name is a wovel or a H the pronoun would be reduced to "L'".

However I think that in most cases these pronouns were not written on the ship (and are still not often written on modern ships). For example, the ship "L'ACHERON" would bear the name "ACHERON".

And to confuse things a bit, when talking about a vaisseau (man'o'war) or a modern ocean liner, the masculine pronoun could be use whatever the name; and the feminine pronoun for a fregate…

And, as always, there are exceptions. If for some reason the ship's owner wants to write the pronoun on the ship, I think the proper way is to write it in capitals as the name itself.

But… again… the replica of Surcouf's ship built in St-Malo bears the name "Le RENARD".

Patrice,

So the implied noun is the ship type? So a frigate named The Rhine would be la Rhin instead of le Rhin?

Thanks for all the info, and replies.

I really appreciate them!

Have not idea as to copyright problems. They are all long out of print though. I think Wooden Ships and Iron Men is one that has been out there in electronic format for some time. I don't recall seeing a legal problem but I may be wrong?

I happen to own some of the games and was happy to be able to replace some of the rules with those online.

Berlichtingen:
In my opinion there is no written rule about this, it is tradition.
For example, "la Normandie" as a French province (Normandy) is obviously feminine. However the ocean liner bearing the name of this province, "Normandie", was always referred to as "le Normandie" – masculine; in fact this meant "le paquebot Normandie": "paquebot" (ocean liner) is a masculine word.
For frigates, the ancient tendancy was feminine. Napoleon wrote: "Je désire que la Muiron sur laquelle je suis revenu d'Égypte, soit gardée comme un monument" (I want "la Muiron", on which I sailed back from Egypt, to be kept as a monument). This frigate had the name of Jean-Baptiste Muiron, who was a man! but as a frigate it was feminine.
But the modern French Navy now mostly use masculine for frigates when the original name is masculine.

Mako11:
I think that you cannot be wrong if you write the ship's name on the ship without any pronoun.
If you have a doubt, PM me.

Le & La are articles not pronouns.

"Le & La are articles not pronouns."
Yes.

Just found this: this grammar book says that in the 20th century the French authorities wanted the article of a ship's name to be the same gender as the name… but that there still was controversy!

« Maurice GREVISSE : "Le bon usage. Grammaire française avec les remarques sur la langue française d'aujourd'hui", Éditions Duculot, Paris-Gembloux, 11e éd., 1980, n° 479, p. 268, §. 1.
"Dans la marine de guerre, en France, une circulaire du ministre François Pietri (13 août 1934) a prescrit de faire accorder l'article avec le nom du navire, en gardant à ce nom le genre qu'il a dans l'usage ordinaire. L'Académie française, sur la proposition de l'amiral Lacaze, a félicité le ministre (22 mars 1935) ; de même l'Académie de Marine. ― Dans la marine marchande, le ministre Raymond Schmittlein, par sa circulaire du 25 février 1955, a rappelé que " la correction grammaticale et la véritable tradition veulent que l'article défini soit du genre qu'appelle le nom du navire et qu'il est particulièrement choquant de voir ou d'entendre une administration parler DU Marseillaise, DU France ou DU Jamaïque ". La question reste controversée : les uns plaident pour l'accord grammatical et veulent qu'on dise : LA " Liberté " ; d'autres sont pour l'accord logique, qui sous-entend navire, ou bateau, ou paquebot, ou cuirassé ; il faut dire, selon eux, LE " Liberté ". ― En fait, l'usage reste indécis (sauf dans la presse, où le masculin l'emporte nettement)."

I also just found that the company which owned the "Normandie" had wanted to prevent journalists to use ANY article before the ship's name! :)

That actually makes sense. So, assuming my dictionary isn't wrong, ships, sloops and brigs are all masculine and frigates and corvettes feminine

Right: in the French Royal Navy the name was (as a rule) of the same gender as the type of ship (merchant navy and fishing ships did not seem to follow such a strict rule).
Ships of the line (vaisseaux), brigs (brigantins), cutters (cotres), xebecs (chébecs), 'boats' (bateaux) are male;
frigates (frégates), corvettes (id° in French), schooners (goélettes), galeasses (id° in French with 'é'), galleys (galères), feluccas (felouques), rowboats and some types of 'boats' as in 'gunboat' (chaloupes), barges and gabares (various péniches)… are female.

Thus [La] Gloriole (feminine) could be a frigate or a corvette; more probably, because it's a diminutive, a felucca

If the chosen name is an adjective, it is accorded to the gender of the type of ship / boat: hence a ship of the line could be Le Tonnant ('Thundering' in the male form) while a corvette could La Pétillante ('Bulby' / 'Sparkling' in the feminine form); a vaisseau could be Le Royal, a galley La Royale ('"Réale", historically: in Southern French, since the galleys were restricted to the Flotte du Levant ('Sunrise Fleet') in the Mediterranean).
Same if the name was title: Le Dauphin for a ship of the line, La Dauphine for a frigate.

Le / La both become "L'" before a vowel L'Orgueilleux -'The Proud', male- for a ship of the line, L'Astrolabe -feminine in French- a goélette.

Le / La L' in capital only at the beginning of a sentence or if the name is given in isolation.

No article on the name plate of the ship (?)

"Royal Louis" without 'Le"
(but it's a modern model, so…).

I like the recommendation of just dropping the articles.

Makes life a bit simpler, though in writing, I'd need to include them.

Probably don't want to go the easy route, and make all starting only with vowels, although that is tempting.

So, since sloops will play a large role in my gaming, are we pretty much in agreement that they all (or most of them), should be masculine?

What about merchant vessels, e.g. sailing ships, and/or the combination of merchant-sloops?

English is not my native tongue and the word 'sloop' was not used i, France, by according to Wikipedia link the 'sloops of war' you probably plan to use would mainly be 'brig sloop' (2 masts) corresponding to French brick / brigantin, male indeed (a 'ship sloop' -3 masts- would be a corvette, feminine).

As for merchant ships, it seems they followed the rules of warships of the same masts, rigging and tonnage. For instance a fregate-type merchantman named to honour the minister de Sartine was called La Sartine (feminine).
(Btw to give a personal name to a ship was seemingly rather exceptional at that time, except the 'Royal Louis', though two merchantmen of 'ship of the line' / vaisseau tonnage were named 'Comte de Provence' and 'Comte d'Artois' -2 of the King's grand children- in 1756 and 1765).
Pinques and polacres (feminine), merchantmen of the Mediterranean, received feminine names.

Thanks for the info.

Actually, I'm thinking some of the smaller, single-masted sloops, of probably 30 – 100 tons, or so, and mounting anywhere from 4 – 8, or possibly 10 cannons. Circa 1700 – 1720, or so.

Bermudan, or Jamaican types, used as merchant, and pirate, or privateering vessels.

Not sure what they would be called in French.

Yes Mako it was in your first message:
"merchants, sloops, privateers, brigs, etc., so naming conventions for the larger frigates and warships may not apply",
perhaps we got distracted :)
For small ships I'm not sure what the "traditions" were – if any, there probably was more freedom about gender and names.

I'm uneasy with the word "sloop", although we often use it in our naval wargames for single-masted "pirate" ships, but I suppose this word was not used by French sailors of this period. The word "cotre" is more French, but nowadays it means a boat with a different (and more recent) rigging so it's not easy to decide how to call these ships.

Single-masted? Falls either in the chaloupe -longboat, pinnace, rowboat- (female) category (boats / ships of a given name tend to increase in size with time, and 'sloop' came from French 'chaloupe' through Dutch 'sloep'); though bateau -boat- (male) is quite generic.

*Or* in the cotre -cutter- (male) category, more likely for a boat carrying that many guns:

The Renard (Fox – male) of 1812 carried 14 pieces, those of a century earlier were certainly smaller:

All in all for civilian and pirate 'sloops' you can allow yourself a large freedom.
For French civilian small ships, Saint-X (male) or Sainte-Y (female) were not rare.
For French corsairs or pirates, what about names of aggressive fishes, such as Murène -moray eel- (female) or Congre -conger- (male)?
Le Congre debout -the standing conger- is a spoonerism I decline to translate

Thanks for the additional info.

Perhaps pinque, and/or pink would work for them, as well.

I've seen a photo or painting (can't recall which now) of a couple of late 19th century, or early 20th century pinks that looked pretty much like a small fishing sloops to me. They were hauled out on a beach, and one of the men was preparing to get his ready to set sail, presumably, on the incoming tide.

From the bit I've read of the descriptions for them, they have a narrow stern, and are otherwise like a sloop. Apparently, they can be multi-masted as well as single-masted, and are typically on the smaller side of the merchant vessels classes.

There are a number of accounts of them being captured by pirates in the early 1700's.

Maybe 'pink' has a wider meaning than French pinque?
It is mentioned that pinques (from Italian 'pinco') were mainly used in the Mediterranean Sea, being a combination of xebec (for the bow) and frigate (for the stern) sometimes with the corresponding rigging;

They were quite similar to the polacre, also mainly used in the Mediterranean.

While in the Atlantic Ocean 'pink' (from Dutch 'pincke') was used for "any small ship with a narrow stern with a large cargo capacity"; generally square-rigged.

To increase the confusion both were flat-bottomed…
Thus it is not unlikely that, with the similarity of names, in the Caribbean French sailors called pinques any small ship called 'pink' in English, even if they lacked the 'Mediterranean' features of the 'true' pinques? Or were the reports you mentioned written in English?

You cannot assume that any "rule" will hold true for naming conventions throughout the age of sail, even for a single nation. I can offer some concrete examples for specific periods. A painting of the Battle of the Glorious First of June (1794), by Nicholas Pocock (1741-1821), shows the sterns of "Le Vengeur" and "L'Achille," both ships of the line, engaging H.M.S. "Brunswick." None of the ships use the article as part of the painted name, but there is a difference in national practice. The British ship's name is painted almost across the width of the stern at lower gallery level, whereas both French ships have theirs within a relatively small cartouche (a roughly oval shape with varying degrees of decorative flourishes) centered at the same level.

On the other hand, I have a book that reproduces a couple of original designs for the stern decoration of 17th century French ships of the line, and both "Le Brillant" and "Le Soleil Royal" (of 1669) do use the article, again set in cartouches, but so small as to be impossible to paint on any scale suitable for wargaming.

The following are names of some actual French privateers of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods: "La Superieure" (with accent mark over 1st e); "Pandour"; "La Railleur"; "Le Confiance"; "L'Heureux"; "La Vengeance"; L'Huit Amis" (which means "the eight friends"); "L'Audacieux"; "Bourdelois"; "Psyche"; "Le Pierre Cezar" (Cezar with an accent over the e--and translating as "The Czar Peter"); and "Du de Wagram."

A 1760 list of the French Navy shows the following names for minor warships and auxiliary vessels: Corvettes: Coquette, Etourdie, Fleche (accent grave over first e); Perle; Rossignol; Sardine; Subtile; Sylphide. A lateen-rigged barque called "L'Eclair." Two xebecs: "Cameleon" and "Seduisant" (accent marks over all the letters e in both names). Luggers: Chasseur; Chevreuil; Espiegle (accent grave over the 1st e); & Hussard. Cutters: Cerf; Furet; Levrette; Milan; Moucheron; & Serpent. Gunboats: Cyclope; Embuscade; Impudente; Levrette; Mefiante (accent over 1st e); Nantaise; Panthere (accent grave over 1st e); Rusee (accent mark over 1st e); Vautour; & Violente. Snows: Curieuse; Ecureuil; Favorite; Lunette; & Serin. Brigs: Hirondelle & Afrique. Bomb Vessels: Etna; Salamandre; & Tempete (with a mark like an inverted V above the 2nd letter e). Storeships & Transports: Barbue; Boussole; Compas; Courtier; Ecluse; Esturgeon; Etoile; Guyanne; Ile de France; Marie; Paysanne; Pleuvier (accent above the 1st e); Porteuse; Postillon; Pourvoyeuse; Saumon; Tamponne (my personal favorite!); Truite; & Villageoise--of the last category, the "Boussole" and "Compas" were considered as equivalent to corvettes, the "Pourvoyeuse" was a flush-decked storeship, and the "Saumon" and "Pleuvier" (accent above 1st e) were fitted out as bomb vessels.

By the way, in case you do not know the meaning of "accent grave," it is an accent mark that slants to the left, rather than the right, and indicates pronouncing as a "short e" in English, whereas the right-slanting accent indicates a sound much like a "long a" in English.

I think the minor warship names would also serve just fine for privateers, while most of the snows, brigs, transports and storeships would do for ordinary merchantmen.

Regarding the vessels called pinks or pinques: I do not consider that the Mediterranean pinks have anything to do with the type of the same name from western and northern Europe. In the latter case, it refers to hull construction, specifically the abnormally narrow stern which, seen from above, would appear as if "pinched in" (and I do not think the similarity of the words pink and pinch is coincidental). There may have been occasional applications to larger vessels, but the form is generally found on one- and two-masted vessels, regardless of the specific rig (and including both square-rigged and fore-and-aft rigged vessels). The Mediterranean term seems more relevant to purpose and rig, where the type was a cargo vessel, which seems to have originally been a three-masted lateen-rigged type. By the 19th century, however, many sported the polacca (or polacre) rig, which was a type of square rig, but with masts in one piece, which allowed shortening sail by lowering the upper yards right down above the courses.

I can't recall how exactly the references to them were spelled, but believe they were probably vessels from Western Europe, sailing to what is now the USA.

The accounts mention some of them being captured off of the mid-Atlantic states, e.g. up near NY and Delaware.

The didn't mention the number of masts carried, but I gathered that they were about the size of a sloop, e.g. probably on the order of 50 – 100 tons, or so.

Some of the references were in current books on piracy, while some of the other accounts were from back in the day, in published reports to the courts, and/or newspapers. Spelling was not a strongpoint for many back then, so you could have pink (pincke, pinque) spelled in a variety of ways, not just due to different languages, but also due to the vagaries of the education level of the person writing down the accounts.

In the drawing I saw, which was in black and white, the vessel had three masts, and from the size of the people on board, it looked like it was probably about 60 – 100 feet long, assuming the proportions were correct. Can't recall if the masts were rigged (I think it was shown at anchor). The foremast was definitely leaned forward, like is show in the middle two images you've provided.

For the single masted Pinque, I think they used that spelling, and the boats were small, and flat-bottomed (a bit rounded at the sides of course), since they were upright on the sand, and not heeled over, like would be done if they had a pronounced keel.

The single-masted Pinque's mast was pretty much vertical, near as I could tell from the rear-quarter angle of the image.

The stern of the single-masted vessel was quite narrow, being perhaps about 4' – 6' across, on a roughly 30' long vessel.