Been on a Racetrack on a Horse With No Name

[RPM]

I just read that in England until 1913 for three-year-olds and 1946 for two-year-olds, British racehorses were not required to be officially named. For the first two years of Gohanna’s racing career he was known as Lord Egremont’s bay colt by Mercury or “Brother to Precipitate” due to him being a full-brother of the well-known racer. And I’ve read several TB pedigrees where the dams were listed only as “sister to So-and-So,” or “Herod mare,” or “Somebody’s Old Grey Mare.”

I just wonder why people didn’t name their race horses in those days. Did they have so many that they couldn’t come up with enough names? Did they not want to pay people with imaginations to name their horses? Did they not consider these well-bred, expensive horses that they took enough trouble to train and race and breed important enough to have names? Did they figure that since you don’t christen a horse you don’t name it?

In Black Beauty (1877) almost all the horses had names (except for some reason Black Beauty’s sire and his famous grandsire). Quakers don’t christen their own children, so maybe Anna Sewell considered all creatures worthy of a name?

I wonder if anybody these days knows.

In the long list of Derby winners I can find only one horse without a name, “Colt by Fidget,” winner in 1797.

[LaurieB]

Interesting. I had no idea. I would have thought that naming a horse was far easier than getting it to the races. It seems odd not to bother.

[tinah]

Why bother until you know if the horse is going to be something?

[Simkie]

Because horses are livestock?

I follow some pages on FB for ranches that breed bucking bulls. Until those bulls make it big, they’re just numbers–generally that relate to their breeding and year of birth. They’re not named, either. I imagine that it was a lot like that before horses were pets.

There are a boatload of young Thoroughbreds even today that are working and training at the track and aren’t officially named. They have to have a name before they start, but not to train. Look up some articles about the missing horses at San Luis Rey Downs for examples.

[Rackonteur]

When my dad was in the Army Reserve at college, the horses they rode didn’t have names, just numbers.

Even the company dog had no name, just a designation – K9.

And then there’s the story of the naming of the TB race horse, Pot8os …

I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t have a starting gate at Epsom in 1797. Can you imagine trying to load “Colt by Fidget”? Or his sire?

[Highflyer]

It’s really not that uncommon even today for racehorses to be referred to as Mr. X’s Bay Colt or The Nasty Filly or Shadow’s Foal. We have several yearlings whose owners have never seen them, and who aren’t named yet.

[Rackonteur]

Sad to think that there are people in the world rich enough, fortunate enough, to own a horse yet not be bothered to try to see it, at least in an e-mail or other electronic medium. I think of all the pics and videos I’ve seen of little girls racing out to the barn on Christmas morning to hug anything from a blue-ribbon-winning small pony hunter to a shaggy grade cross that hopefully won’t buck her off the first time she gets on it, who names her new gelding Tinkerbell, or wants to put pink tack on him even if his name is Duke, and I just don’t get wanting to own a horse and not having at least five names in mind for him before he’s foaled.

Even Man o’ War was called “Red” before the Belmonts gave him his racing name. Isn’t it easier to say Red or Blackie or Star than to say “Major Belmont’s chestnut colt” or “Useeit’s colt” or “the bay filly”?

[Christa_P]

I’m guessing the horses had barn names from the grooms, but that wouldn’t have carried over to the official record.