I was in a meeting with the comms director last week (I work for NERC) and they had some suggestions as to just who will get final say on the name. Suffice to say I'm not confident the result will be Boaty McBoatface.

It has been a great PR exercise for NERC though!

I kind of like the sound of RRS Pingu as well.
Still, that's mainly because I won't be one of the crew people who has to deal with it for months at a time I guess.

Boaty McBoatface wins poll to name polar research vessel | Environment | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... rch-vessel

I think second place will take it somehow.

I believe the second and third options were probably not what they'd been hoping for either. Pingu was one, and the other was Usain Boat.

I suspect the actual name will end up being the third option, or possibly the fifth.
They could go with option one but the crew would need to be able to keep a straight face at all times and pretend there was nothing funny about it at all whenever they were communicating with anyone outside the UK. If they do go for Boatface they need to concoct a convincing back story for the little known arctic explorer and slip it onto the Internet.

Shame, I quite liked Clifford The Big Red Boat myself.

I think they should stick with 'Name of Vessel'. That would be awesome when they had to fill in forms for it. Reminds me of the racehorse that was called 'Some Horse' just to mess with the commentary.

Jon

The ship is to be named after Sir David Attenborough and the onboard sub will be named Boaty McBoatface

Surely should be Subby McSubface?