An anelace (a.k.a. cinquedea) is a civilian short sword.  It was developed in northern Italy and enjoyed a period of popularity during the Italian renaissance of the 15th and early 16th centuries.  Also known as an anlace. (from: http://www.omnilexica.com/?q=anelace)

One of my first tasks when creating TCOTU was figuring out a good name for the ship.  After all, Star Trek has Enterprise, the Lost Fleet series has Dauntless, Battlestar Galactica has Galactica.  I wanted the ship in my book to almost be a character itself and I knew she’d need a good yet unique name.  After wasting far too much time deciding, I had come up with something serviceable but not perfect.  It was time to let the issue go and start telling the story.

Early in the book, when the ship’s specifications and capabilities are discussed, the story mentions the class of the ship, a Dagger class corvette.  I chose that because I wanted something small and attacky (yes, I am an author) but not too powerful sounding like Greatsword or Excalibur.  Who would name their traffic cop ship, Excalibur?  As I was writing this section, I fondly remembered back to Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising (which is fantastic, by the way) and how, in that book, I learned that British frigates related the name of the helicopters on their ships back to the actual ship’s name.  In the book, the frigate Battleaxe calls its helicopter “Hatchet.”

This got me thinking about the Dagger class corvette.  I searched for synonyms on “dagger” and the choice for the ship’s name was immediately clear (and so was her nickname). Anelace was born.

Spoiler Alert: In the second book, No Way To Start A War, BRS Kite (a kite is a 10-12th century reverse teardrop-shaped shield) is a Buckler class ship.  Her sister ship is BRS Aspis (which is an ancient Greek shield carried by hoplites).  I tried to name all the Brevic ships in this matter.  Hollaran Commonwealth ships are named differently.

On a side note, I Google-searched for an image of an anelace before I woke up and realized that everyone knows what a dagger looks like.  However, this is what I found on Google Images… too funny.

Google results for “Anelace”