I looked at an ad for a horse that was imported and was named an ethnic slur. You bet I’d change it. I probably wouldn’t worry about studbook naming conventions unless I intended to also apply to change it with the studbook.
I tend to agree with following the letter convention - I enjoy being able to follow pedigrees, and that gets hard when people change names outside the naming convention/don’t list breeding. But at the end of the day, if it’s impossible to find a name you like with the letter, then you do what makes you happy. (But as someone else mentioned: definitely do get the breeding/breeder’s information correct!)
If it’s a gelding, I wouldn’t worry about renaming, nor about changing the first letter of the name.
I name all of my sales horses names that are super similar to the sire names (e.g. I had a gelding by Cormint that I named “Cormorant” and a gelding by Clinton that I named “Clintaro”) mainly so I can keep track in my own mind of who’s who. But every gelding I’ve sold has ended up being renamed something completely different with no relation to bloodlines or stallions. I make sure that the breeder info is entered correctly in USEF when I life record, so there shouldn’t be issues tracking the horse down the road.
With mares it’s a slightly different story, because the first letter of the name can be helpful when naming convention uses different letters each year. But most of the mares that I’ve sold have gone to completely non-breeding homes, and names have been changed there too.
I’m in the camp that says, “if a name sucks, change it.” No reason to hate a name! With that being said, I do appreciate it when people leave breeder prefixes/suffixes in tact
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My late trainer imported many SFs where each year has its designated letter and all foals of that year must have names starting with that letter, don’t recall seeing any single letters stuck before the name but that seems a sensible solution. It wasn’t easy, between spelling and announcer butchering many of the registered names just didn’t work, some mispronounced French words sounded too similar to English slurs or innuendos and just were inappropriate. And the German names for horses out of those books were worse.
Sometimes the names were just kind of silly and desperate attempts to meet the requirement, that’s true in any breed, it’s a struggle to get them accepted and the obvious ones are already taken. There was a great French show jumper who sired some others but in his year the name started with J and they ended up with Jus du Pommes. Grand looking horse, Olympic Gold Medal winner with a name that sounded like a Lead Line Pony named by a 4 year old. Apple Juice? Conjures up images of sippy cups.
Change the name. There’s plenty of both good and bad luck in horses and a name the horse doesn’t even know is not to blame. Worst luck I ever had was one that kept the registered name and had the same barn name from birth… Even barn names, you rarely know what they are and many imports barn names are that of the van driver that dropped them off or an agent, vet or Pro involved in tne sale . Really.
That said, might be pushing your luck to rename him before you actually have him in your barn safe and sound. When you do, come on here, we love name games.
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