Talk:United States ship naming conventions

How do ship numbers work? Are they always synonymous with the name?
E.g. my dad served on the "U.S.S. Dehaven, DD 727". Do all ships have both a name and a number? Why? Is one or the other ever changed so that there might be more than one number or name for a given name or number? ★NealMcB★ (talk) 22:50, 22 February 2023 (UTC)


 * See Hull classification symbol. That will help explain it. BilCat (talk) 21:12, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

[Note: w o lf  moved my question to my talk page and responded there, thinking it was more appropriate there. I've now moved their answer back from my talk page, since my goal in posting my original query here was to motivate improving the article by addressing the relationship between the name and the number. ★NealMcB★ (talk) 16:27, 1 March 2023 (UTC)]
 * ''to see wolf's great contribution, see my talk page, where he originally made it: [] ★NealMcB★ (talk) 20:08, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you, great answer. Those would make excellent additions to the article. Are you planning to do that? If not, shouldn't we move this back to the article talk page so it can help improve the article and be easy to find until then? ★NealMcB★ (talk) 22:56, 23 February 2023 (UTC)