I have different conventions for single player and multi.
Single player I'm lazy, I use names like "Ice colony LR slow II" or "repair III".
However I do tend to give attack ships more colourful names: My first uber-nasty attack ship design will inevitably be called Skybastard, because I like the sound of it. My first dedicated anti-fighter design will be called "black mage" in honour of
8-bit theatre.
Multiplayer I just use random names/ words. For some reason I always seem to be missing my names files when I play. In the pvkprop game I have a massive fleet of ships with randomly rhyming names: Mean, Keen, Green, Treen, Unseen, Clean, Stream, Beam etc. I'm hoping that's at least as confusing for my enemies as it is for me...