What's in a name?
..."When it came to naming my spacecraft, I felt a responsibility to find the right name. I knew that an awful lot of thought and symbolism had gone into the earlier names, and finally selected Faith 7 , which was painted on the side of the spacecraft. The name would symbolize my faith in the launch team, my faith in myself, and my faith in God"...
Astronaut, L. Gordon Cooper; in "Leap of Faith"
..."An awful lot of thought and symbolism had gone into all those earlier names. I felt a certain responsibility. I selected the name Faith 7 to show my faith in my fellow workers, my faith in all the hardware so carefully tested, my faith in myself and my faith in God. The more you study, the more you know all the scientific stuff, it correlates. It confirms religious faith.
The name was painted on the side of the Mercury 7 spacecraft by the McDonnell Corporation at Cape Canaveral. The Design was selected by me"...
Astronaut, L. Gordon Cooper; in "All we did was fly to the moon"
The Real Thing
The Faith 7 logo was painted on the capsule by McDonnell engineer B.R. Schuster (Cece Bibby had moved to California). There was not much left of the design when the capsule was recovered.
Souvenir / Interview
(Q:) What do you think about the souvenir version patch for your MA-9 flight?
(A:) Oh, its not bad...
(Q:) Did the Mercury 7 astronauts ever discuss having mission patches?
(A:)We had talked about it, but because we were allowed to name the spacecraft, place the name on the side of spacecraft, that sort of sufficed for the lack of patches. When we got into Gemini and the NASA Adminstrator was trying to totally de-personalize the whole program when the mission patch came out.