Is there a logic behind the naming of the Rebel Alliance's starfighters?

Question

Looking at the most recognizable ones at least, I was wondering why the older starfighters of the Rebel Alliance are called X-Wing, Y-Wing, and the newer ones A-Wing and B-Wing. A logical order would be to name the first model A-Wing and so on.

Is there any system or structure supporting the ship naming scheme, or is this just coincidence/will of Mr. Lucas ? Or is it because you could say the ship's shape corresponds somewhat to those letters (even the B-Wing does, albeit remotely). AFAIK, these four examples do not share one manufacturer, which adds another dimension to the question.

BTW, this question is interestingly related.

Answer 1

The names are because the shapes of the craft resemble that letter.

When viewed from the front or back, and X-wing looks like the letter X :

When viewed from above/below, a Y-wing looks like the letter Y :

When viewed from above/below, and A-wing looks like the letter A :

When viewed from the side, a B-wing looks like a lowercase letter b :

The B-Wing comparison is a little more tenuous. Here's how it looks with the letter overlayed:

Answer 2

The X-Wing is clearly named after the shape the "wings" have in attack position: an X.

The Y-Wing does form a Y, when looking from above; though clearly less recognizable than the X-Wing.

For the newer ones, though, whoever did the naming lost me.

The A-Wing can be said to ROUGHLY resemble a capital A when seen from above, but the B-Wing really just seems to have needed a name...

If anyone can explain the B-Wing, please do, though.

Oh, see the neat answer with the pictures! But I still have a VERY hard time seeing a "b" on the B-wing!

Answer 3

B-Wing is short for "Blade Wing", named so for its long sleek blade-like profile. Classed as a Blockade Buster because its maneuverability was terrible for dog fights. Enough firepower to ruin anything and thin enough nothing can hit it.

This is revealed the Star Wars Rebels episode "Wings of the Master". In that episode, the B-Wing prototype was revealed and referred to as the Blade Wing.

Answer 4

The B-Wing isn't named after it's appearance. Can't quote sources, but the B-Wing was the personal design of Admiral Ackbar as a new class of lighter, faster bombers to replace the heavy and slow Y-Wing. 'B' stands for 'Bomber', not it's shape.

The other three are indeed named after their appearance.

Answer 5

None of the above.

When they were making the movies they did not name the ships. They were all called starfighters. But when it was time to introduce two new fighters, in order to identify the models, they were assigned letters: A and B.

Coincidentally the A fighter actually looks somewhat like a capital A, but the B had no resembling to the letter. They kept the name anyway in the toys release, and later tried to give some explanation like "it's short for blade" or "it looks like a lower case b when it's upside down and you are looking at it with one eye closed".

Truth is it was a cool looking ship which could do cool moves rotating the cockpit, which did not get enough screen time because it wasn't easy to spot on screen with the black sky in the background (some scenes involving b wings were in fact cut in post production).

Also, there is no in-universe explanation to these names, as they use a different alphabet, and X, Y, A, B (and E) do not look like latin letters.

Answer 6

This odd naming convention was addressed by Pablo Hidalgo in Star Wars Insider #60 from 2002.

Q. Why are B-wings called B-wings? They look nothing like a "b"! Shouldn't they be called T-Wings?

PH: If you tilt your head the right way and squint, you could argue that they kind of look like a lower-case "B". Not buying it? Well, one theory is that the "b" actually stands for "blade", since the profile of a B-Wing fighter has a passing resemblance to an inverted knife, with the cockpit being the rounded pommel of the handle and the lower foils being the blade

A convenient in-universe answer is that then-commander Ackbar and Verpine shipbuilders specifically designed the B-wing as an answer to the Imperial threat of Nebulon-B escort frigates.

The real-world answer can be found at ILM. When model-makers were assigned to the two new Rebel fighters for Return of the Jedi, the were labeled "A" and "B" fighters. The "A" ended up being the A-wing, and the "B" the B-wing, regardless of what they actually looked like. During production, the B-wing also earned the nickname the "Bill-wing" after model-maker Bill George.

Incidentally, LucasArts developed a T-wing starfighter as cannon fodder in their TIE Fighter flight-sim game, so that letter is already taken.

Answer 7

They aren't really all about the shape of the wings matching a letter, especially, as noted, the Star Wars alphabet is different. The B-wing obviously is not a B shape. It is short for "blade wing."

Answer 8

The B wing assault fighter was designed by a calamarian scientist, not admiral Ackbar! It was called B wing as short for Blade wing because of its sleek profile and its resemblance to a sword when S foils are deployed. You could argue that their universe doesn't have A, B, X and Y in their alphabet so the point is irrelevant......... but if this is the case how does the entire imperial stormtrooper Korps get is designations for TKs like the famous TK421 that was clobbered by luke when they sneaked onto the death star. Bottom line is George Lucas is a clever man and a business man but the simple truth is he made the Star Wars stories up as he went along, He never wrote them all then showed them in wrong order, New Hope was never originally called New hope, it was originally called Blue Harvest, Star Wars was the second name, then when ESB came along he renamed the first one to ANH. Otherwise Leia would never have snogged her brother in ESB even though she says she's "always known" at the end of ROTJ!!