While I don't know this, I remember reading a fan fic once where they started adding nearly random adjectives to old ships names. Thus, one unlucky Imperial captain got command of the Mildy Aggressive.Soulman wrote:What I want to know is how they came up with millions of names for their ships. Did they have 40,000 ships called HIMS Terrible or did they have a ship for every word in existance ( the ISD HIMS Rose) as well as some completely made up names like the HIMS Usddgf6fdfsf82?
Seriously, though, they probably did any number of things. Gave ships in different districts or whatever the same name, just gave the lesser ones numbers, or perhaps used words from languages other than Basic.