Is the name Colossus your own, or did Vittorio Cuniberti assign that to his project? I've never stumbled upon a concrete name for this project, only a project name, such as you've stated. So, if it's yours, I'd suggest a more 'appropriate' Royal Italian name, as I'm sure you can come up with!
- But if the Colossus is the suggested name by Eng. Gen. Cuniberti, then is it so too, in Italian??? Otherwise only one word - NEAT!
well, at the time of the origins of this designs, this would have been one of the largest ships in the world. because of that, he said the following in his article (I haven't read it myself, so correct me if I'm wrong, this intel comes from wikipedia, but I have seen it on different places describing the same)
The ship Cuniberti envisaged in his article was a "colossus" of the seas. His main idea was that this ship would carry only one calibre of gun, the biggest.
Powerfully armoured, this colossus would be impervious to all but the 12-inch (305 mm) guns of the enemy. Cuniberti saw the enemy's small calibre gun as having no effect on his heavily armoured colossus. His ship would carry a single calibre of gun, the largest; at the time 12 inch. Cuniberti's "ideal ship" had 12 of these large calibre guns and she would show a significant advantage over the (usual) 4 of the enemy ship.
His ship would be fast, so that this colossus would choose her point of attack.
Cuniberti saw this ship able to discharge such a heavy broadside, all of one heavy calibre, that she would engulf first one enemy ship, moving on to the next, and the next, disdainfully destroying an entire enemy fleet. He conjectured the effect of a squadron of, say six, "colossi" would give this fleet such an overwhelming power as to deter all possible opponents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Cuniberti
because of this, I chose this name for the drawing project, and because the ship lacked a name, I used it as name for the ship as well.
EDIT: also, the most appropriate name for this ship would be an already used name, maybe even that of the Dante Alighieri, because the 'colossus' would take on the place in the fleet that the dante got, namely the first dreadnought in the fleet (and in this case, maybe even the first in the world)
when you think about it, maybe the ww1 battleships would have been called 'dantes' instead of dreadnought when this ship would have been build