The post you are reporting:
The British Railways ships names above are first class. BR would normally keep a ship throughout her life and the name would usually remain unchanged.
Nowadays, it is common for one company to own ships specifically for chartering out, another to charter the ship, another to manage it, another to operate it, etc, and for it to pass through many hands during its lifetime.
The Norman Spirit was previously owned by RMT then P&O. She is now owned by LD Lines who prefix their ships with "Norman." However, they have entered into an arrangement with TEF where the latter will charter her, with LD concentrating on the passenger side and TEF on the freight. She is going to be repainted with a TEF white hull with both TEF and LD insignia. The name change is probably to reflect the fact that she will no longer be pure LD.
The Brave Merchant is one of the four Racehorse class ferries originally owned by Norse Merchant Ferries who used the suffix Merchant. The original owner must have been a horseracing enthusiast as the first part of each name is derived from famous racehorses.
Brave Merchant was named after Dancing Brave, Dawn Merchant after Dawn Run, Northern Merchant after Northern Lad, and the Midnight Merchant similarly after some other gee gee. They had paintings of horse races on the bulkheads outside the passenger lounge and a brass statue of a racehorse inside the entrance to the lounge.
They have all passed through several hands since with the Brave Merchant's last employment being as the "AVE Liepaja" in the Baltic, where she is currently laid up in Gdansk. She will presumably be renamed Norman something and, since she is a ROPAX ferry (roll on roll off freight with a bit of passenger capacity), which is a wise choice for the run, I suggest she is named Norman Wisdom.