Captain James Kirk, now in command of the Navy’s most futuristic ship, the USS Zumwalt, is used to being teased about his famous name.

The teasing from colleagues goes back to the early days of his career.

“I don’t take any offense,” said Kirk. “If it’s a helpful moniker that brings attention to help us to do what we need to do to get the ship into the fleet and into combat operations, then that’s fine.”

Earlier in his career, colleagues told him that “they couldn’t wait for him to reach the rank of captain.”

But this Kirk is actually James A. Kirk, not James T. Kirk. The different middle name didn’t matter though, as his call sign became Tiberius, later shortened to “T;” Tiberius being the middle name of the captain of the USS Enterprise.

Kirk’s USS Zumwalt is the Navy’s largest destroyer at six hundred-and-ten feet in length, and the first of the DDG-1000 class of destroyers. The ship was launched from its Bath, Maine shipyard last month.

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