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There are a number of Starfleet vessels that are named after famous humans. For instance, Star Trek: The Next Generation had appearances from the USS Crazy Horse ("Descent") and the USS Pasteur ("All Good Things").

Are there any Starfleet ships named after famous non-humans? I'm especially interested in ships that have "screen time" and aren't just ships that appear on a tactical display.

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    What if we discover that the USS Voyager was named after hyperintelligent NASA probe V'ger? – Graham Lee Jan 26 '18 at 6:43
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    I think this question addresses this topic already scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/80058/… – geewhiz Jan 26 '18 at 15:03
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    Star Trek is translated into many languages. For instance in the Vulcan translation, all the ships are named after Vulcans. – Harper Jan 26 '18 at 15:04
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There is the USS Gorkon (NCC-40512), named for the peace-making Klingon chancellor from Star Trek VI. It appeared in The Next Generation episode "Descent: Part I."

Also, the USS Sarek (NCC-72075) appears in Deep Space 9, "Favor the Bold."

The USS Shran (NCC-1413) honors Thy'lek Shran, the Andorian officer who eventually became an ally of Captain Archer on Enterprise.

The USS Sitak (NCC-1924) was named presumaby for a Vulcan admiral. The admiral herself appeared in the Deep Space 9 episode "Operation Return." The ship was in the later episode "Sacrifice of Angels."

The USS Khitomer (NCC-66613), from the video game "Star Trek: Bridge Commander," appears to be named after the planet Khitomer on the Federation-Klingon border. It was the site of the peace conference at the end of Star Trek VI.

The USS Surak (NCC-65601) is named for the foundational Vulcan philosopher.

Finally, there are number of ships without identifiable terrestrial eponyms. Presumably they are named after alien individuals, places, or other entities: ShirKahr (apparently a city on Vulcan), T'Kumbra, Wambundu, G'Mat, and Yolja. The last, being a Deep Space 9 runabout (which are all otherwise named after rivers) is presumably named after a non-Earth waterway.

Wikipedia has a good list of ships that have appeared in Star Trek media, from which most of this answer is derived.

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    ShirKahr is named after a Vulcan city. – Politank-Z Jan 26 '18 at 5:51
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    The Jenolan was named for the Australian tourist attraction Jenolan Caves. The Yolja River is on Bajor. – Politank-Z Jan 26 '18 at 5:55
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    There are thousands of languages on Earth, and many of them should have many thousands of words and names. Thus there is much duplication of words and names between languages. Even cases where by coincidence similar words have similar meanings in languages that are totally unrelated. With thousands of other known intelligent species that often have many languages there would be thousands of times as much opportunity for coincidental identical sounding names in different languages. So an Earthly sounding name might be alien, and an alien sounding name might be Earthly. – M. A. Golding Jan 26 '18 at 10:06
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    @M.A.Golding: while that's true, the Federation would know that as well, and thus it stands to reason that ships will probably be named after things where it's not (very) ambiguous what the name refers to (and/or is not a rude word in a major language of a member world, if possible). At the very least they'll be named after things that are recognizable as famous (so that, e.g., "sarek" also means "sewing needle" for a tribe of 500 small furry creatures on Dimidium still does not mean people aren't intended to think of the Vulcan individual first). – Jeroen Mostert Jan 26 '18 at 11:52
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    It's odd that the Vulcans named a city for Sheer Khan though. – Will Crawford Jan 26 '18 at 12:17

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