Another shipbuilding yard/company - another way of naming ships it builds. If for example ship is called Phalanx (why not) than another ships from the same company could have a name like Testudo -- another military formation. (some heavy fighter I guess).
The vast majority of Wing Commander's human fighters (that is to say, those contracted by the military - which may be every single one) would be named by the Terran Confederation government rather than by an aerospace company.
In fact, one of my favorite piece of WC is the pic of WC1 Blair on Trial that was released on a mag article about WC2. Oh, those were the days.
The picture you're thinking of is from the back of the Wing Commander II Deluxe box. It's not actually Blair on trial -- it's just a different background for the 'conversation with Tolwyn' intro scene.
My impression of the early WC games was that the fighters were frequently named after swords, animals or jet aircraft. BOCTAOE
This is one of those fan things that I don't like.
Yes, there has always been a conscious attempt to make Wing Commander fighters that are named after ancient weaponry (Rapier, Scimitar, Arrow, Longbow, Excalibur, Epee, Sabre, Broadsword, Crossbow, Morningstar, Lance, Stiletto, etc.)
That's a fun theme... but it gets icky, to me anyway, when fans invent their own additions to this list in order to account for *all* the ships -- things like animals and jet aircraft.
That's bending the rules to make yourself feel good rather than noticing any sort of pattern. Hornet, Raptor and Ferret, Tigershark, Piranha, Vampire, Panther, etc. aren't part of a theme -- heck, the F-22 certainly wasn't the Raptor in 1990. (There was certainly an attempt to name some WC3/4 ships after World War II aircraft -- Hellcat, Thunderbolt, Bearcat... but that's an aside, not a trend towards totality.)
It reminds me of the attempt to claim that there's a Dralthi in every game because people want that piece of trivia to exist -- the Drakhri isn't a Dralthi, people...