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The names of all the ships in One Piece are suffixed with Go in Japanese. For example, Going Merry Go, Thousand Sunny Go, Moby Dick Go. However, the English version drops the Go suffix. This suggested it might be a honorific used to address a ship, but I couldn't find any source that says "Go" is a honorific.

There's also no mention of Go on the Japanese ship-naming conventions page on Wikipedia, and I couldn't find anything like this in any other place either.

I don't recall this being explained in the manga. Is there any explanation for this use of "Go", with a reliable source for reference?

Masked Man
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    The character used for it is 号, is a counting marker. I don't know what that indicates, but it might help. It's also not used for all of the ships. The government ships, at least, don't seem to use that (though I could be wrong). – kuwaly Dec 03 '13 at 06:24
  • @kuwaly Well, yeah, but from what I seem to recall, the Marine ships don't have a name per se. They are just called Marine ships, or named after the Captain, such as Vice Admiral Garp's ship. – Masked Man Dec 03 '13 at 10:34
  • Probably they mean "go" in english and not in japanese! :P – votelessbubble Dec 03 '13 at 14:02

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号 or the -go suffix is normally used to name naval (aka war) ships in Japan. If you want get the equivalent in English, is the same as S.S. Name of the Ship used by the US. One Piece is just following the same naming convencion.

Braiam
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    Do you have some kind of reference, or is it some "general knowledge" thing that a Japanese just happens to know? I have also read about this in some forums, but couldn't find any reliable source. – Masked Man Dec 03 '13 at 17:00
  • @MaskedMan very late response, but [Japanese Wikipedia for 号](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B7) mentioned "鉄道・バス・船舶などの乗り物の愛称につける接尾辞" (A suffix for vehicle's nickname; trains, buses, ships, etc) – Aki Tanaka Apr 03 '17 at 18:51