The naming of United States Navy vessels after living people was common in the earliest years of American history, but as the 20th century began, the Navy had firmly established a practice of naming ships for people only after they had died. In 1969, a Navy panel formally decreed that warships would no longer be named after living persons. That lasted until 1974, when President Richard Nixon announced the naming of an aircraft carrier after United States Representative Carl Vinson. Over the next half-century, the Navy named more ships for living people than it had in the previous two centuries. From October 2020 to March 2023, the Navy named a ship for a living person every eight months, a pace unseen since 1776. U.S. Navy ships are named by the Secretary of the Navy under U.S. law, explicitly until 1925 and implicitly since. No ships were named for living former Navy secretaries until 2001; since then, every Navy secretary save one has named a warship for a living predecessor, accounting for more than one-quarter of the ships they named for living people. No one has named more U.S. ships for living people than Ray Mabus, who did so eight times during his service as secretary from 2009 to 2017. "I think it's...important, when we can, to honor people who are still with us and thank them for what they did," Mabus said in 2016. The U.S. Navy generally announces the name of a ship some time before it is launched, and well before it is accepted for purchase and commissioned into active service.

List of ships

The following ships received their names while their namesakes were alive. The list includes several ships whose namesakes died before the ships were commissioned.

1770s

1790s

1800s

1810s

1820s

1830s

1850s

1900s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s