How the horses in this year’s field got their names
Thanks to strict rules from the Jockey Club, naming a horse is more difficult than it seems
Gunnevera is a small town in Spain, Girvin a really small town in Texas (pop. 30) while McCraken, Kan., is slightly bigger (pop. 190).
Still, all three places are getting some extra attention, thanks to three Kentucky Derby contenders named for them.
Girvin’s owner, Brad Grady, was born and raised on a cattle ranch in Girvin. McCraken’s co-owner, Clay Whitham, said he used to drive through McCraken, Kan., a lot and liked the name. And Gunnevera is owned by a consortium of Spaniard Jaime Diaz Mengotti and Venezuelans Solomon Del Valle and Guillermo Guerra.
Naming Thoroughbreds is a precise practice that’s harder than it looks because of stringent rules from the Jockey Club, which registers all Thoroughbred racehorses. Those include no famous people, nothing vulgar and nothing already in rotation. There are 450,000 names in the Jockey Club database; owners can plug in their choices and find out if it’s already in use.
This year’s crop reflects the popular trend of one-word names and those that lean heavily on pedigrees.
For example, Classic Empire’s dam is Sambuca Classica, and his grandsire is Empire Maker, which created a bold combination for owner John Oxley. Irish War Cry is out of Irish Sovereign, and Practical Joke is sired by Into Mischief and out of Halo Humor. State of Honor’s sire is To Honor and Serve and his dam is State Cup.
Some horses combine both trends: Sonneteer, one of three horses from Calumet Farm, is by Midnight Lute, Untrapped is by Trappe Shot, and Tapwrit’s sire is the hugely popular gray stallion, Tapit. (Tapit’s name, incidentally, is a perfect combination of sire and dam, by Pulpit and out of Tap Your Heels.)
One-eyed crowd favorite Patch was actually named before an infection took his eye. Calumet manager Eddie Kane said the name was a play on his sire, Union Rags.
But faced with huge crops of young horses to name, owners pick names for wide and varied reasons. A third Calumet horse, Hence, was a really good looking horse, “hence,” he should be fast, Kane said.
Fast and Accurate is the motto of Northern Kentucky pain doctor Kendall Hansen.
“First we submitted Fast and Furious, but they wouldn’t allow it because of the movie,” Hansen said. “I always tell my patients when I describe my procedures, I say ‘I’m really fast and accurate,’ it just came out and it stuck.”
Rick Porter named his young horse Battle of Midway because he loves the U.S. military, and the Battle of Midway in 1942 was a turning point for the Allied forces in the Pacific theater during World War II.
Some people speculated that Bluegrass Stakes winner Irap was “pari” or bet in French spelled backward, but Steve Haskins of the Blood Horse set the records straight. Before Irap was named, he was treated for joint issues with Interluekin-1 Receptor Antagonist Protein therapy. The van driver saw the word IRAP on his papers and assumed it was his name. Owner Paul Reddam decided to keep it.
Longtime owner Jerry Moss, the founder of A&M Records, usually names his horses for associated hits — remember champion mare Zenyatta, anyone? But in this instance, Gormley was named for British sculptor Antony Gormley, an artist that Moss greatly admires.
Horse names can also be sentimental tributes. Looking at Lee is owned by Lee Levinson, his sons Andy and Michael and a family friend, Don Nelson. In this case, Michael Levinson named the horse for his dad, Lee. J Boys Echo is named for owner Dennis Albaugh’s son-in-law, Jason Loutsch, whom he calls “J Boy,” with a nod to the colt’s dam, Letgomyecho.
We still don’t know how Thunder Snow was named — the Godolphin folks never responded to our queries. But here at the Herald-Leader, we are hoping that owner Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates is as big a fan of the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore — whose gleeful reporting about thunder snow during a Boston blizzard is legendary — as we are. At any rate, we know which horse Cantore will bet on today.
Then there’s the name that every racehorse owner can relate to: Always Dreaming.
“It’s magical,” Anthony Bonomo told the Miami Herald in April. “I don’t know anyone who’s been in the horse business who doesn’t dream of this. So the name that my wife picked out — Always Dreaming — is what you have to do every day, especially in this business.”