Tuesday 13 November 2012

It's All In A Name

Names are very important to us for the horses, we like strong positive racing names but stable names that reflect the character and personality of the horse, that the guys handling the horse can relate to.  Nothing worse than hearing 'move over you' or 'his stable name is Sh*t Face'.  In the same way as it is with us, it is hard to say a name with anything other than the emotion you are feeling, "Morning Maisey" with a smile in your voice and the horse will know you are pleased to see them, they will be even more happy if you are carrying their breakfast at the same time.  The last few weeks for us have all been about names which has been quite funny, but also a little frustrating.

When John and I bought Onedin Line (Oh-Knee-Din Line) we never for one minute thought this was a difficult name.  I don't know about John but in my house growing up, the quieter you were in the living room, the longer you got to stay up, consequently I spent the 70's watching a variety of drama series that I probably wasn't that interested in, many of which had links to boats, The Onedin Line, When The Boats Come In and if dad was out and it was just me and mum, The Love Boat and Triangle.  I have to thank my parents for this early education because it means I know how to pronounce Onedin Line, and given enough alcohol, may even be able to hum the theme tune.

We have been keeping a list of our favourite mis-pronounciations of Onedin Line, so far we have:

In third place - Simon Earle, Wan-Din Line (stable name of Wanda).

In second place - Jamie Snowdon One-Din Line (when I told Jamie that he was obviously too young to remember the 70's TV show he said he wasn't born until 1979 which is quite frankly ridiculous),

First place however goes to Wally Irvine our excellent racehorse transporter, a recent invoice for transporting Onedin came through in the name of On-Lynne Bin-Line (stable name of Bin Laden?).

Onedin Line is now at Venetia Williams yard, Simon had threatened to tell the yard his stable name was Wanda rather than Odin but I'm not sure he did.  We haven't yet found out what they are calling him (hopefully not Sh*t Face) but we will, it is going to be even more exciting to hear what the course announcers call him when he starts his racing career in earnest with us.

Not content with struggles with Onedin Line's name, we have also in the last couple of weeks announced the winning name from our 'name Poppy our unraced/unamed racehorse competition'.  We had lots of entries some of which were very clever and people had tried to take inspiration from her breeding (Strategic Prince and Haiti Dancer).  The Judging Panel liked the name Mezile (Meh-zee-lah) who is the current Minister for Women's Affairs in Haiti, we duly checked that it was available and sent all the forms off to register the name.  We were a bit concerned however for it to be rejected on the grounds that it was too similar to a horse in racing called Mezel, we therefore took the only course of action available to us, and put a prefix on it making Poppy now Loxley Mezile.  This is not such a big deal as having 'our' prefix means that we can use it as part of Maisey's foals name, eg Loxley Explorer (or something like that) out of Lisellan Amazon.  Hopefully all the paperwork will go through and we will actually have a horse with a name for her first race in a couple of weeks.  Whatever she is called on the course, she will always be Poppy to us (or Pops, Popsy, Poppies - definitely not Sh*t Face).

And finally this blog entry is bought to you by our new Blog identity EPDS Equine, I eventually got around to setting myself up with a more business like blog name rather than using my personal account.  It's still me doing the blogs, I am just called EPDS Equine, that is E-P-D-S Equine, or just Sh*t Face(d)!!