France

France (FRA) Ship Namelists

Source file: common/units/names_ships/FRA_ship_names.txt

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Overview

The Marine nationale named its ships by type, with a strong sense of its own history. Battleships took provinces and great statesmen, cruisers took the admirals and corsairs of the old navy, contre-torpilleurs took beasts of prey, raptors, captains of the Marine royale and the martial adjectives of the ships of the line (Le Fantasque, L'Audacieux, Le Terrible), torpilleurs took winds and storms, and submarines took nymphs, heroines, sea creatures, gems, scientists and the months of the revolutionary calendar.

Vanilla Hearts of Iron IV already ships a deep French file of about 1,170 names. Immersive Ship Names Expanded keeps that depth and builds on it:

• Deeper hull lists: destroyers 81 → 255, submarines 188 → 276 and light cruisers 36 → 118, enough for a full wartime building programme. Every added vessel name was borne by a French warship or follows a documented class formula.
• Repairs: typos (Algerié, Eurydicé, Céres, Helbronn for Halbronn), doubled spellings (Méduse and Meduse, Artémis and Artemis, Cornélie and Cornelei), fallback names in the wrong order or the wrong term (the battlecruiser fallback read Croiseur cuirassé, which means armoured cruiser), and the English Marseilles in the city list.
• One home per name: vanilla gave the battleship and battlecruiser lists the same six ideals, and shared names between the light cruiser, heavy cruiser, battleship and carrier lists. Each name now sits with the ship that carried it in 1936-45.
• Role pools: vanilla's light-destroyer and minelayer lists become universal role pools for torpilleurs and mine warfare, joined by avisos and Free French corvettes and frigates.
• Thematic pools: vanilla's six pools are repaired and extended, and eleven new ones follow, four of them ideology-gated.

Prefixes. The Marine nationale used no ship prefix, and neither does vanilla, so no group has one.

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Namelist Groups

Ship-Type Specific Category

Group Tag	Type	Ship Types	Sample Names
FRA_DD_HISTORICAL	Destroyers	ship_hull_light destroyer	Le Fantasque, L'Audacieux, Mogador, Volta, Vauquelin, Maillé-Brézé, Guépard, Aigle, Jaguar, Durandal, Arquebuse, Spahi, Bisson, Enseigne Roux, Le Formidable, L'Invincible
FRA_SS_HISTORICAL	Submarines	ship_hull_submarine submarine	Surcouf, Casabianca, Le Glorieux, Redoutable, Rubis, Saphir, Minerve, Junon, Aurore, Requin, Pluviôse, Gustave Zédé, Phèdre, Lamarck, Panope
FRA_CL_HISTORICAL	Light Cruisers	ship_hull_cruiser light_cruiser	La Galissonnière, Jean de Vienne, Gloire, Montcalm, Georges Leygues, Duguay-Trouin, Émile Bertin, De Grasse, Colmar, Lavoisier, Catinat, Florent de Varennes, Villaret de Joyeuse
FRA_CA_HISTORICAL	Heavy Cruisers	ship_hull_cruiser heavy_cruiser	Algérie, Duquesne, Tourville, Suffren, Colbert, Foch, Dupleix, Léon Gambetta, Victor Hugo, Indochine, Madagascar
FRA_BB_HISTORICAL	Battleships	ship_hull_heavy battleship	Richelieu, Jean Bart, Clemenceau, Gascogne, Alsace, Normandie, Bretagne, Provence, Courbet, République, Liberté, Danton, Guyenne
FRA_BC_HISTORICAL	Battlecruisers	ship_hull_heavy battle_cruiser	Dunkerque, Strasbourg, Brest, Cherbourg, Bertrand du Guesclin, La Hire, Soleil Royal, Bucentaure, Chesapeake, Trinquemalay, Grand-Port
FRA_CV_HISTORICAL	Aircraft Carriers	ship_hull_carrier carrier	Joffre, Painlevé, Béarn, Commandant Teste, Dixmude, Arromanches, Gallieni, Lyautey, Clément Ader, Guynemer, Roland Garros, Douaumont

Notes on the hull lists:

• Destroyers are the contre-torpilleurs, the French designation for destroyers from 1899 to 1955, with their forerunners, the torpilleurs-avisos and croiseurs-torpilleurs of 1885-1899: the six classes of 1922-1940, the weapon-, soldier- and officer-named classes of 1899-1917, the war prizes of 1920 and the post-war escorteurs. The extension follows the Le Fantasque formula with adjectives borne by French ships of the line, the Chacal formula with beasts of prey, and the older formulas with weapons and arms of service.
• Submarines keep vanilla's list and add the boats it lacked, the Émeraude class of the 1937-40 programmes, and four formulas the navy used: heroines of tragedy and opera (the Aurore class had Créole, Bayadère and Favorite), scientists, Nereids and gems.
• Light cruisers add the protected and unprotected cruisers of 1862-1904, the Admirals of France (the source of Jean de Vienne) and admirals of the Marine royale, the Republic and the Empire.
• Heavy cruisers combine the heavy cruisers, the armoured cruisers and vanilla's colony names (the Algérie formula).
• Battleships add the Danton class and the pre-dreadnoughts that vanilla had listed as light or heavy cruisers.
• Battlecruisers follow the Dunkerque formula (cities of national memory), keep vanilla's captains of the Hundred Years War, and add flagships of the Marine royale and French naval victories.
• Carriers keep vanilla's carriers and presidents and add marshals of the Great War, pioneers of aviation and battles of the Great War.

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Role-Specific Pools (Ship Designer)

Group Tag	Topic Name	Ship Types	Sample Names
FRA_DE_HISTORICAL	Torpedo Boats	Universal	Bourrasque, Mistral, Siroco, L'Adroit, Le Hardi, Le Fier, L'Alsacien, La Melpomène, Le Picard, Balny, Zouave, Libellule
FRA_AVISOS	Avisos	Universal	Marne, Somme, Arras, Calais, Vauquois, Ardent, Friponne, Bougainville, Savorgnan de Brazza, Élan, Chamois, La Batailleuse
FRA_MINELAYERS_HISTORICAL	Mine Warfare	Universal	Pluton, Le Gladiateur, Sirius, Rigel, Antarès, Aldébaran, Véga, Croix du Sud, Bételgeuse, Canopus
FRA_CORVETTES	Corvettes & Frigates	Universal	La Malouine, La Bastiaise, Aconit, Alysse, Lobelia, Mimosa, Commandant Détroyat, Croix de Lorraine, L'Escarmouche, La Découverte

Every role pool follows a documented French series:

• Torpedo boats: the torpilleurs d'escadre of the Bourrasque, L'Adroit, Le Hardi and Le Fier classes (winds, adjectives and provincial demonyms), the torpilleurs légers of the La Melpomène class, the Le Normand-class escorteurs that continued the demonym formula, and the torpilleurs de haute mer of 1884-1900.
• Avisos: the avisos of 1916-1922 (rivers and battle towns of the Great War), the second-class avisos with their feminine adjectives, the Bougainville-class colonial avisos named for explorers, and the Élan and Chamois-class minesweeping avisos with the names of the 1939 programme.
• Mine warfare: the minelaying cruiser Pluton (renamed La Tour d'Auvergne in 1939), the net-layer Le Gladiateur, and the star-named Sirius-class minesweepers.
• Corvettes and frigates: the four Flower-class corvettes France ordered in 1940, the nine Flowers of the Free French Naval Forces and the Free French River-class frigates. At 17 names the pool is below the usual 20. The two other Free French Rivers, La Surprise and Tonkinois, are left out because the aviso Surprise and the destroyer Tonkinois already carry those names.

Vanilla history assigns FRA_DE_HISTORICAL to the starting Bourrasque and Le Hardi classes, so the pool keeps its vanilla tag. FRA_MINELAYERS_HISTORICAL also keeps its vanilla tag.

Roles considered and skipped:

• Escort and light carriers, seaplane tenders: too few names; Commandant Teste and Béarn stay with the carriers.
• Cruiser and minelaying submarines: Surcouf and the gem-named minelayers stay with the submarines.
• Armoured and scout cruisers, flotilla leaders: they share the heavy cruiser, light cruiser and destroyer formulas.
• Gunboats, monitors, auxiliary cruisers, training ships, submarine tenders: too few names, or no naming series.

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Universal Thematic Topic Category (Ship Designer)

Universal selection pools available for any ship hull or squadron:

Group Tag	Topic Name	Ship Types	Sample Names
FRA_REGIONS	Regions	Universal	Île-de-France, Bretagne, Normandie, Provence, Auvergne, Périgord, Quercy, Comté de Nice, Comtat Venaissin
FRA_CITIES	Cities	Universal	Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes, Port-Vendres, Fécamp, Bastia, Saint-Tropez
FRA_COLONIES	Colonies	Universal	Algérie, Indochine, Madagascar, Sénégal, Pondichéry, Nouvelle-Calédonie, Tahiti, Louisiane, Acadie
FRA_MARSHALS	Marshals	Universal	Gaspard de Coligny, Maurice de Saxe, Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars, Michel Ney, Louis Nicolas Davout, Thomas Bugeaud
FRA_BIRDS	Birds	Universal	Autour, Busard, Gypaète, Balbuzard, Grand-Duc, Goéland, Cormoran, Fou de Bassan, Martin-Pêcheur, Coq Gaulois
FRA_FISH	Aquatic Life	Universal	Maquereau, Turbot, Murène, Barracuda, Mérou, Cachalot, Orque, Langouste, Hippocampe
FRA_MYTHOLOGY	Mythology	Universal	Jupiter, Hercule, Thésée, Ulysse, Mélusine, Morgane, Merlin, Ankou, Taranis, Gargantua
FRA_RIVERS	Rivers & Lakes	Universal	Loire, Seine, Garonne, Rhône, Dordogne, Vilaine, Adour, Léman, Étang de Berre
FRA_BATTLES	Battles	Universal	Tolbiac, Castillon, Marignan, Fontenoy, Denain, Yorktown, Carillon, Seneffe, Coulmiers
FRA_HEROES	Heroes & Explorers	Universal	Jacques Cartier, René Caillié, Auguste Pavie, Gustave Eiffel, Marie Curie, Molière, Jules Verne, Claude Debussy
FRA_NATURE	Wind, Sky & Sea	Universal	Rafale, Mousson, Harmattan, Zéphyr, Galerne, Tonnerre, Comète, Équinoxe, Mascaret

The first four are vanilla's pools, repaired and extended. They keep vanilla's display names, which the game translates into every language:

• Regions: Mulhouse (a city) and Catalogne (France held only Roussillon) leave; Nice and Venaissin take their provincial forms; 30 further provinces and pays join.
• Cities: Marseilles becomes Marseille; Évry (a new town of the 1960s) and four ambiguous overseas communes leave; the post-war mergers Charleville-Mézières and Corbeil-Essonnes take their 1936 names Charleville and Corbeil; Fort-de-France and Cayenne move to the colonies; 22 ports and historic towns join.
• Colonies: Nigéria and Niévès (never French possessions) and Mali (a 1959 name; Soudan is already in the pool) leave, Maurice takes its French name Isle de France, La Gambie becomes the trading post Albreda; 21 holdings of 1936 and earlier colonies join.
• Marshals: vanilla's marshals of 1180-1789 are joined by 53 marshals of the Empire and of France up to 1870. Marshals remembered for desertion or treason (Bourmont, Marmont, Bazaine) and foreign princes are left out; the marshals of the Great War are in the carrier list.

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Ideology-Gated Pools (Ship Designer)

Each pool is available only while France has the matching government (can_use = { has_government = ... }); none is tied to a national focus. Every government sees at most two of them.

Group Tag	Topic Name	Ideology	Sample Names
FRA_PRESIDENTS	Presidents	democratic	Adolphe Thiers, Jules Grévy, Sadi Carnot, Félix Faure, Raymond Poincaré, Paul Doumer
FRA_REPUBLIC	Republican Ideals	democratic	Droits de l'Homme, Tricolore, Quatorze Juillet, Ça Ira, Fraternité, Marianne, Abbé Grégoire, Ledru-Rollin, Aristide Briand
FRA_SOCIALISM	Commune & Labour	communism	Commune de Paris, Mur des Fédérés, Robespierre, Babeuf, Louise Michel, Varlin, Jean Jaurès, Internationale
FRA_NATIONALISM	National Glory	fascism	Honneur, Revanche, Montjoie, Bayard, Turenne, Jeanne Hachette, Colonel Driant, Camerone, Bazeilles
FRA_KINGS	Kings	neutrality	Charlemagne, Hugues Capet, Philippe Auguste, Saint-Louis, Louis le Roi-Soleil, Clovis, Dagobert, Louis-Philippe
FRA_EMPIRE	Imperial Glory	neutrality	Austerlitz, Iéna, Wagram, Marengo, Malakoff, Solférino, Grande Armée, Aiglon, Joséphine

• Gates: vanilla opened Presidents to every government except the non-aligned, and Kings to every government except the communist. With four new ideology pools that would have shown democratic and fascist France three pools each, so Presidents now opens for democratic and Kings for neutrality.
• Revolutionary ships: the first names of Republican Ideals (Droits de l'Homme, Républicain, Tricolore, Quatorze Juillet, Ça Ira, Barra, Viala, Indivisible, Patriote) were all borne by ships of the line of the Revolution.
• Kings: vanilla's 38 kings, named by epithet, are joined by the Merovingians and the kings vanilla left out (Henri II, Charles IX, Louis XVI, Charles X, Louis-Philippe). François d'Orléans, which matches no king, becomes François Ier.
• Living persons: every person in the new pools died before 1936. Vanilla's Presidents still holds three who were alive in 1936 (Gaston Doumergue, Alexandre Millerand, Albert Lebrun); the pool is kept as vanilla wrote it.

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Scope Notes

• Depth: vanilla's lists were kept whole. The user asked for far deeper destroyer, light cruiser and submarine lists than the mod's usual targets, so those three lists were extended from list pages of French Wikipedia and English Wikipedia (destroyers, torpedo boats, submarines, cruisers, avisos, ships of the line, Admirals of France and Marshals of France).
• Light and heavy cruisers: Gloire, Marseillaise and Montcalm were both armoured cruisers of 1900 and light cruisers of the 1930s; the light cruisers keep them. Colbert stays with the heavy cruiser of 1928. Jeanne d'Arc stays with the training cruiser, Foch with the heavy cruiser, and Clemenceau and Océan with the battleships.
• Battleships and battlecruisers: the six ideals (Liberté, Justice, Vérité, Démocratie, République, Patrie) belong to the Liberté and République classes and stay with the battleships. Strasbourg joins Dunkerque in the battlecruisers; Metz stays with the ex-German light cruiser.
• Destroyers and torpedo boats: the French designations decide the split. The contre-torpilleurs are destroyers; every torpilleur class, including those the starting game assigns to FRA_DE_HISTORICAL, is a torpedo boat. A name borne by a destroyer before 1918 and reused for a torpedo boat in the 1930s (Bouclier, Branlebas, Épée, Fleuret) stays with the destroyer.
• Role mismatches: vanilla's minelayer list held colonial and minesweeping avisos, the ironclad ram Cerbère and two cruisers. The avisos moved to the aviso pool, the cruisers to the light cruisers, and Cerbère left the file.
• Fallbacks: the fallback names put the type first, as French does (Contre-torpilleur %d, Croiseur léger %d, Sous-marin %d), and correct vanilla's battlecruiser term to Croiseur de bataille %d.