Nine names at a time, in the style you pick — then the one you like drawn to scale on your transom, and said the way the Coast Guard would hear it in a Mayday.
Funny · 9 of 52 names
Sunk Cost27½″ wide in 4″ letters — fits your 48″. Said four times in a Mayday: 2 syllables each.
Tap any name to check it.
- In capitals
- 33″ wide
- Tallest letters that fit
- 6½″ (5½″ in capitals)
- In a Mayday
- 8 syllables before your position
Spelled on the radio: Sierra Uniform November Kilo / Charlie Oscar Sierra Tango
How it sounds in a Mayday
MAYDAY — MAYDAY — MAYDAY
THIS IS SUNK COST — SUNK COST — SUNK COST — YOUR REGISTRATION NUMBER
MAYDAY — THIS IS SUNK COST
The Coast Guard’s procedure: “MAYDAY” three times, “THIS IS”, the boat’s name three times and the registration once, then “MAYDAY” and the name once more — four times in all, before anyone hears where you are.
The radio procedure, the spelling table and the 4-inch rule were checked 2026-09-26.
Quick answer: pick a style and you get nine names — funny, fishing, pontoon, classic, one-word, or built around someone’s name — and “Nine more names” deals another hand. Tap one and it is checked two ways nobody else checks. The transom: how wide it is in real block letters at the height you want, and the tallest letters that fit the room you have. The radio: in a Mayday you say your boat’s name four times before you say where you are, so the page counts the syllables, spells it the way the Coast Guard spells letters on the radio, and warns you when a pun will be written down wrong — or when the name is a distress signal itself.
Three checks before you order the lettering
- Say it four times, fast. The Coast Guard’s procedure for a Mayday on channel 16 is “MAYDAY” three times, “THIS IS”, the name of the boat three times and the registration number once, then “MAYDAY” and the name again. A name that is a mouthful in the showroom is a mouthful when you are taking on water. Open “How it sounds in a Mayday” under any name to read it out.
- Hear it, don’t read it. Puns are the best boat names on a transom and the worst on a radio. “Knot Guilty” reads beautifully and is heard as “Not Guilty”, and whoever is taking your call writes down what they hear. Keep a pun if you love it, and be ready to spell it — every name here comes with its spelling in the Coast Guard’s letter table.
- Measure the room, not the transom. Engines, swim platforms, ladders, drain fittings and the registration sticker all take space. Measure the flat run the lettering can actually use, and the tool tells you whether the name fits at your letter height, and how tall the letters can go.
How wide a name really is
Every width here is measured, not guessed: it is the name set in Helvetica Bold — Adobe’s own published letter widths — at the letter height you choose, where “letter height” means the height of a capital. Lower case is narrower than capitals, which is why each name gets two numbers. A condensed or script face will come out narrower; a wide or outlined one, wider.
| Name | 3″ letters | 4″ letters | 6″ letters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nomad | 14″ / 16″ | 19″ / 21″ | 28½″ / 31½″ |
| Sunk Cost | 20½″ / 24½″ | 27½″ / 33″ | 41½″ / 49″ |
| Knot Guilty | 22½″ / 28½″ | 30″ / 38″ | 45″ / 56½″ |
| Honeymoon Toon | 35½″ / 41″ | 47½″ / 55″ | 71″ / 82″ |
| Northern Anchorage | 40½″ / 52″ | 54″ / 69½″ | 81½″ / 104½″ |
Roughly, then: every capital letter at four inches takes about four inches of hull, and a two-word name at a legible height wants two to four feet of clear transom.
Is there a rule for how big a boat name must be?
Only for a documented vessel — one registered with the Coast Guard’s National Vessel Documentation Center rather than your state. For those, 46 CFR 67.123 says the name and hailing port must be in “clearly legible letters … not less than four inches in height”, and for a boat documented for recreation they are marked together somewhere clearly visible on the hull. A state-registered boat’s name has no federal size rule at all; what it must carry are its registration numbers, which are a different job with a different rule — at least three inches, in block characters that contrast with the hull.
So the four inches in the tool is a sensible starting height that also happens to satisfy the documented-vessel rule. Go taller if the room is there: a name you can read from the next slip is the point of having one.
Where the names come from
All of them were written for this page — the puns, the fishing and pontoon names, the one-word names — and the classic ones are put together from two short lists of words that sound right on a boat. None is lifted from anyone else’s list — though a name you like may well already be on a boat somewhere; plenty of names are. “After someone” puts the name you type into fourteen of the traditional patterns — Miss, Lady, Spirit of, ‘s Folly — which is how boats have been named for a very long time.
If you are building your own boat, the name is the last job and the best one. The build itself is in How to Make a Pontoon Boat.