you would expect to see a Chinese captain on a Chinesenamed ship very often even by sheer random chance . I would disagree that it would would happen very often . Starfleet ships have been named after a lot of things . older ships , alien ships , notable humans , notable aliens . The Federation consists of 150 member worlds and assuming roughly 67 billion Federation citizens per member world about a trillion citizens . If even 0 . 1 % of the population chose to serve in Starfleet , that would still be a pool of over a billion officers and crewmen . The odds would be that , other than the Captain or someone in the hierarchy specifically requesting the starship be named something and special dispensation being granted by the Head of Starfleet Operations a la the So Paolo being renamed Defiant , and that was Ross , not Sisko , the odds are incredibly slim . Think about it this way . if Janeway ' s command had been named the USS Earhart or if Sisko ' s ship was the USS Abubakri , it would be the same type of odd and unlikely coincidence . Necheyev ' s flagship was the USS Gorkon . I don ' t think it ' s a stretch to think that the USS Yamato ' s Captain Varley wasn ' t Japanese or that the USS AlBatani ' s Captain Paris wasn ' t Arab . The only thing we have seen in Trek is that ships captained by particular species tend to have species specific ship names . The USS T ' Kumbra is a Starfleet ship with a Vulcan captain and crew whereas the USS Hera is a Starfleet ship with a human captain but predominantly Vulcan crew . We might see a USS Kumari with mostly Andorians on board or a USS Shallash for a Tellarite Starfleet ship .