Naming our new ships
New ships, new names. The two WALLENIUS SOL sister ships currently being built at the Yantai shipyard in China will bear the names Botnia Enabler and Baltic Enabler. Here’s the story behind the names.
Ships and boats have borne names for as far back as written records have been kept, and different names were fashionable in different epochs. According to sources from the Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore, shipping lines began naming vessels according to different systems during the nineteenth century. The names might follow a theme or perhaps all end with the same suffix. In the Middle Ages it was the custom for a ship’s name to reveal where it hailed from, for example Lybske Svan (the Swan from Lübeck). When WALLENIUS SOL began looking for names for its two record-breaking ships, it awarded the prestigious assignment to Jonas Kleberg, one of the owners of Wallenius Lines.
Hi Jonas, you’ve been given the honour of dreaming up two names worthy of the world’s biggest ice-rated multi-fuel RoRo ships. How did you do it?
I brooded for a while. Bounced ideas off of my wife and my daughters and their boyfriends. I googled various references linked to the Gulf of Bothnia, sustainability and progress. Then we began discussing what the aim of WALLENIUS SOL really is, and we landed on the power words future, hope, sustainability, progress and opportunities.
When did the penny drop, so to speak?
Well actually, it was when my youngest daughter, who was sitting at the dinner table, suddenly said: “Dad, Enablers! You want to be enablers, so concentrate on that!”. And that was that. I think Botnia Enabler and Baltic Enabler are two perfect names for WALLENIUS SOL as a facilitator for Swedish and Finnish base industry and the niche the company has carved out for itself.
The first vessel, which is scheduled for delivery in the first half of 2022, will bear the name Botnia Enabler.
