Royal Caribbean has long made its fleet instantly recognizable with the signature "of the Seas" suffix — but not every name the company dreamed up ever made it onto a ship. A look at United States Patent and Trademark Office records reveals dozens of trademarked names that remain unused, some sitting dormant for more than two decades.
The reasons behind filing these names vary. Some trademarks are reserved to block competitors from snatching up an appealing phrase, others hold a spot for projects that never launched, and a few may even be deliberate decoys designed to obscure which names the cruise line is genuinely considering. A batch filed in January 2023 — including "Fun of the Seas," "Happy of the Seas," "Idol of the Seas," and "Love of the Seas" — falls into this uncertain category.
The full list of names filed but never used ranges from the evocative ("Nirvana of the Seas," "Valhalla of the Seas," "Eden of the Seas") to the surprisingly corporate ("Metropolis of the Seas," "Volunteer of the Seas") to the just plain puzzling ("Happy of the Seas"). One of the oldest, "Journey of the Seas," was originally filed all the way back on February 16, 2001, and still hasn't graced a hull.
As for how Royal Caribbean actually lands on the names it does use, CEO Michael Bayley has said the company once paid outside firms to generate options using analytical data, but eventually decided to handle the process internally — drawing on a broad pool that includes suggestions from guests. Names then go through rounds of vetting and consensus-building before one is chosen. The process isn't always straightforward: when the line recently decided to revive the name "Legend of the Seas" for its newest Icon Class ship, it had to refile the trademark in February 2025, more than 30 years after the original patent was first registered in 1994.
The 2026 Legend of the Seas is a staggering upgrade from its predecessor — topping 248,000 gross tons and accommodating nearly 10,000 passengers and crew, compared to the original Vision Class vessel's roughly 2,000-person capacity and sub-70,000-gross-ton frame. The first Legend of the Seas retired from the Royal Caribbean fleet in 2017 after more than two decades of service. This story was reported by Royal Caribbean Blog.
