The Star Trek franchise has had many iconic and timeless stars, including Kirk, Spock, Picard and Data. Its true star, however, is easily the U.S.S. Enterprise, which has been in the majority of its various TV shows, movies and books. The ship even got an entry in the franchise named after it, albeit one that remains incredibly controversial. Despite how iconic the Enterprise is, though, it wasn't originally going to be the ship that Kirk would be the captain of.
The original name for the series' starship was the Yorktown, which admittedly doesn't sound quite as catchy. Behind the original and eventual name for Star Trek's main ship is a bit of American history, though this hasn't made Yorktown a major player in the series canon.
U.S.S. Yorktown
The original name that Gene Roddenberry suggested for the ship that would be the Enterprise was the USS Yorktown. This reflected Roddenberry's literary and historical interests, as the ship, like the Enterprise itself, was named after a historical craft. The real-life Yorktown was a World-War II-era aircraft carrier that was named after the last battle of the Revolutionary War and ironically, shared its class with the real-life Enterprise.
Roddenberry eventually went with the iconic Enterprise name of his own volition, and not for any outside reason. This was due to his fascination with the real-life Enterprise and desire to use the name in honor of it. Though this robbed Yorktown of the chance to have its name used in one of the most iconic science-fiction spaceships of all time, it would still eventually find its way into the Star Trek franchise, both officially and unofficially.
Star Trek's Canon Yorktown
A starship named the NCC-1717 Yorktown was eventually introduced in the original series, being mentioned in the second season when it was planned to meet up with the Enterprise. A successor to this ship was featured in Star Trek: The Next Generation, with a registry number of NCC-61137. Like the original, it didn't factor much into the series and was only a factor in four episodes. The Yorktown with easily the biggest role in the series was the entirely different Starbase Yorktown in Star Trek: Beyond. As its name would suggest, this Yorktown wasn't a ship, but an utterly massive space station that hosted millions of people from various species' throughout the galaxy.
It was made up of interlocking rings that made up its frames and had several different city-sized sections for entertainment, housing and ship docking. Its satellites also provided a sufficient degree of armaments with which the Yorktown could defend itself. Given the changes in the Kelvin timeline compared to the original series, it's unknown if the original Yorktown ship still exists in this continuity, or if it was named after the space station of the same moniker.
Roddenberry also suggested that the new Enterprise seen beginning with the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was originally named the Yorktown. This came about because of the idea that the Starfleet wouldn't want to reuse a name so quickly for their ships, and that the Yorktown was subsequently renamed as a new Enterprise to replace the original. This would eventually be canonized by supporting incidents of Starfleet giving ships new names, but unfortunately, this again meant the Yorktown would be replaced by the Enterprise, keeping the name from ever truly becoming mainstream within the series.