I Ask You, USS Morton Kondrake!

Lately I've been wondering how one gets a weapons system named after one's self. More importantly, can I get one named after myself?*

For example, why was the M-1 main battle tank named the "Abrams" and not, say, the Eisenhower or the Collins? Eisenhower and Collins were more important figures in WWII than Abrams, after all. Maybe it has to do with war reporting. "US troops led by a formation of Eisenhowers stormed Sum Dang Spot today..." It doesn't sound terribly good. The alternative is even worse. "US forces, spearheaded by a battalion of Collinses, attacked Rebel strongholds in..." It sounds more like a bar tab than an order of battle, and the difficulty with pluralization would drive editors to seek solace in said Collinses.

The habit of naming tanks comes to us from the British. When the British were forced to evacuate from Dunkirk, they left most of their tanks behind for the victorious Germans to tinker with. The British then took receipt of a large number of US tanks under Lend-Lease, all of which bore logical but unimaginative names like "Medium Tank M-3" or "Light Tank M-3". The British took one look at this muddle and said "Right, that one there's a Grant" and the names stuck.

But seriously, who picks these names? Now that we've got a USS Ronald Reagan, is a USS Richard M. Nixon likely? Is a USS Hubert Humphrey possible, given political realities? Would the USS Stephen King work, or would it freak out its own crew? What sort of image would the USS Noam Chomsky present, or the USS Patrick Buchanan?

I ask you, USS Morton Kondrake!

*The ideal weapons system to be named after me are our anti-missile missiles. They almost never have to do anything, and on those rare occasions when they are launched, hardly anybody expects them to work anyway.