Your Favorite Horse Names

One of the great bits of fun for the casual observer of the Run for the Roses is examining the competitors’ names on the betting boards. In fact, a quick Internet search will turn up any number of quizzes to help you determine what your favorite Kentucky Derby horse name would be, should you ever be in the position to name such a magnificent beast (or, perhaps, a human child).

If the online amusements are inadequate, you can always use a simple Mad Libs-style metric like this: adjective/adjective(optional)/noun. Your results are always sure to be amusing, and it’s a taste of what actual horse breeders and Thoroughbred owners have to go through each time a new pony is foaled.

But why are such odd conventions actually used? If you’ve ever wondered why Thoroughbred horses have weird, often phrase-based (and even nonsensical) monikers, there’s actually a very good reason for that. The tradition dates back to the founding of The Jockey Club in 1894, which remains the central registry for all Thoroughbred horses in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

The purpose of the club is to generally govern the standards of the horse breeding and racing industries, and they still publish and update the Bible of the industry, the American Stud Book. However, perhaps the Jockey Club’s most public-facing responsibilities has to do with horse naming.

There are actually a number of specific rules one must follow when naming their horses, and these are outlined by the Jockey Club in Rule 6F of the Principal Rules and Requirements of the American Stud Book. While there are a few dozen regulations governing what you may or may not name your horse, the first and most pressing one (at least from the fan’s perspective) is this: Excepting special case-by-case circumstances, no horse may share the same name as that of any other horse in the registry. This reason, more than any other, drives the rationale behind the bizarre naming styles most of us are familiar with (or become familiar with during Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown season).

Here are some of the hard guidelines one must comply with when naming their new Thoroughbred for the Jockey Club’s registry:

• Names must consist of no more than 18 characters (including punctuation and spacing)
• Names cannot be acronyms in their entirety (like W.T.F. or B.F.Y.T.W. or R.O.F.L.M.A.O., etc.)
• Names cannot end in any horse-related term (“filly,” “colt,” “stud,” etc.)
• Names cannot list entirely of numbers (so 01100011011011110110001101101011 is right out)
• Names cannot be considered to be ethnically, religiously, sexually, or otherwise offensive in their meaning or implied meaning.

Generally speaking, the names have to be reasonably innocuous. For example, a name like Pro Laps Anis would be hilarious, but the Jockey Club would likely disallow such a glorious innuendo. The rule of hoof here is to be as family friendly as possible. Horses also cannot be named after living persons without their consent, and those named for deceased celebrities must justify their request in writing with the Jockey Club.

Puns on famous folks may or may not be allowed, and it likely has to do with the political environment of the time. Would Valdimir Poutine be acceptable in 2018? Maybe, maybe not. Stormy Donald? Same deal. Of course, most horses will outlive such topical names anyways, so it’s better to come up with something more timeless than, say, Gronkowski. (It isn’t as if the horse’s owner actually gets a percentage of the handle turned on their pony, after all.)

So what’s your favorite Kentucky Derby horse name? I passed this question around the KentuckyDerbyPreview.com office, and these were the results. (Real names have been changed to protect the guilty.)

Andrew – shoulderthingthatgoesup

L.L. – Daisy Chain

Rod – Russian Collusion

Sarah – Bom Trady

James – Wedding Socks

K.C. – Crypto Coinnoisseur

Corbin – Back Burner

You can look up primary name eligibility by visiting the Jockey Club’s online name lookup service here:

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