U.S. battleships are traditionally named after what? A - States
B - War heroes
C - Presidents
D - War battles
Answer: A - States U.S. Navy battleships by law, are named for states, except for the USS Kearsarge which was named by an act of Congress. Each of the 48 contiguous states has had at least one battleship named for it except Montana; two battleships were authorized to be named Montana but both were cancelled before construction started. Alaska and Hawaii did not become states until 1959, after the end of battleship building, but the battlecruiser, or "Large Cruiser," USS Alaska was built during World War II and her sister, USS Hawaii, was begun but never completed.
For decades the U.S. Navy has named many of its most powerful warships after former presidents.
The aircraft carriers USS
Dwight D. Eisenhower, USS
Theodore Roosevelt, USS
Abraham Lincoln, USS
George Washington, USS
Harry S. Truman, USS
Ronald Reagan, USS
George H.W. Bush and USS
Gerald R. Ford and the future USS
John F. Kennedy.
The attack submarine USS Jimmy Carter. The destroyers USS Roosevelt (named for Franklin D. Roosevelt) and USS Lyndon B. Johnson.
But don’t count on there ever being a USS Donald J. Trump—for the same reason there isn’t a USS Richard M. Nixon and probably won’t ever be a USS William J. Clinton, USS George W. Bush or USS Barack Obama.
Trump is divisive and, among Navy leaders, unpopular. More to the point, the secretaries of the Navy who shape ship-naming conventions seem to be increasingly wary of naming ships after any president. “They sort of appreciate how controversial that stuff has become,” said Robert Farley, a University of Kentucky political scientist and historian.