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What's in a name?


Kelsain

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I've noticed everybody here calling all the fighters of Macross "Valkyries"

While I love this name for the mecha, is it really correct? I know that the VF stands for "Variable Fighter," VT stands for "Variable Trainer," & I admit I've been wondering about YF...

But anyway, I always thought it was

VF-1 - Valkyrie

VF-4 - Lightning

VF-9 - Cutlass

VF-11 - Thunderbolt

etc...

Those were the craft's designations, and that you wouldn't call a VF-11 "Valkyrie" any more than you'd call an F-22 "Tomcat."

Discuss...

Edited by Kelsain
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Yup, Ido's response hits the nail on the head. For a real-world equivalent, note that the names Monitor and Dreadnought refer to specific ships, while "monitor" and "dreadnought" refer to general types of ship. Example in a sentence, "HMS Hercules was a Colossus-class dreadnought completed in August, 1911."

Edited by ewilen
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The VF-1 was the only real "Valkyrie", but it is used generically to designate all variable aircraft much as people use names like "Band-Aid", 'Q-Tip", and "Kleenex". Those are all brand names, not products.

I was thinking Xerox instead of copier. But it's all the same concept.

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Pardon my mecha ignorance, but what does "Y" in YF-19 stands for?

I'm not sure of its literal meaning, if there is one, but 'YF' designates a prototype aircraft, while 'VF' would mean it entered production. The YF-19 is in Macross Plus, where as the VF-19 is in Macross 7, where it had won the competition and entered mass production. Similarly there is the YF-21 and VF-22.

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THe Y designation actually comes from the real worl d US tri-service designation system which the UN spacy seems to mostly have adopted. As it currently works the Y is tacked on before the actual type designation for prototypes of production craft (like YF-22, or YF-17). The Spacy must not be following the tri-service system exactly since they would properly call the VF-19 prototype YVF-19 (that and their penchant for using out of order letters like S for certain subtypes).

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