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Considering the keel was constructed with steel from the twin towers I think it was always intended to be named Somerset. It is a place name though like the Arlington and New York.

I guess that I didn't make my point clearly enough. It used to be that you could pretty much glean from a ship's name what type of vessel it was. Carriers were named after major battles or famous ships (Coral Sea, Yorktown, Enterprise); Battleships (now Boomers) after states; Heavy Cruisers after major cities; light cruisers after smaller cities; and Dock Landing Ships (LSD) were sometimes named after counties.

These modern amphibs have names that are all over the place. Major cities, midsize cities, national parks & rural counties. I had thought that the reason for that might be that the San Antonio-class was being built before 9/11 and that some of the ship names could have been changed after they were ordered. If you go back & review the fleet carrier & light carrier names during WW2, you will see that some of them had their names changed twice before they were launched... for example, when the Yorktown (CV-5) was sunk at Midway, the Navy changed the name of one of the new Essex-class carriers then building to Yorktown. The original name was then transfered to another of the carriers, thus causing a second name-change.

Therefore, I was wondering if the events of 9/11 might have caused the Navy to re-name one of it's LSD's then on order to "Somerset" from something else (like a city somewhere between New Orleans and San Antonio). You can tell much from it's sistership's name, New York, because that name falls within the original possibilies. But like "Gator Navy" says, the Navy's ship naming scheme is hopelessly broken, so you really can't tell anything from a ship's name today.

The fact that they may have melted some Twin Tower steel in the fabrication of the ship's keel is only tangential my point.