Talk:HSwMS Ulla Fersen (1789)

Latest comment: 13 years ago by Shem1805 in topic Title?

Title? edit

Surely, in accordance with Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(ships)#Military_ships, this should be HMS Ulla Fersen (1789)? I don't see any other articles using HSwMS, and it is specifically forbidden to make up prefixes. Shem (talk) 00:09, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

This is a tricky issue. As the second para of the article Swedish Navy remarks, "Some other navies, but not the Swedish Navy itself, use "HSwMS" (for "His Swedish Majesty's Ship") in English for Swedish Navy ships when it is necessary to differentiate them from vessels from Her Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy." The problem is in distinguishing between British and non-British royal vessels. HSwMS is analogous to the usage HDMS for Danish vessels, on HNMS for vessels of the Netherlands, or Norway. Given the sheer number of British vessels, using HMS for all vessels belonging to monarchies is likely to cause confusion. That said, while I generally favor usages that reduce ambiguity over those that increase it, I have no strong feelings on this.Acad Ronin (talk) 04:03, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
Given that I cannot find a single other instance of "HSwMS", and given the guidelines, I'll go ahead and move it, editing as appropriate. I'll chase down any redirects as well. Incidentally, we use "HNLMS" for Dutch ships, which seems to be utterly wrong too, since they are actually prefixed with "Hr Ms" ... but there are a lot more of them! I'll mention it at WikiShips. Shem (talk) 21:57, 26 January 2011 (UTC)Reply