Battle of the Falkland Islands
The name derived from the fact that the lead ship was intended as a replacement (German: "ersatz") for the armored cruiser , lost to mines in 1914, and it had been ordered under the provisional "Ersatz Yorck". The other two ships, "Ersatz Gneisenau", and "Ersatz Scharnhorst", were considered to be replacements for the armored cruisers and , both of which had been sunk at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, also in 1914.