What's in a Name

I don't follow pop culture. Although I enjoy movies and music and respect those who are good at their craft, the more a celebrity speaks the less I like him or her. Regardless, being on the twitter it was hard to not notice that Kanye West and one of those Kardashian people named their newborn "North West".

Other than my initial horror that the South West might be royally pissed at the overlook and it could spark a new dumb-baby-name civil war, I just felt bad for the kid. Why, with things so hard on kids nowadays growing up, does any parent want to saddle them with even more? I don't know.

Anyway, it's neither here nor there. It's a free country and I don't want to live in one where majority rule picks baby names, so good luck to the little one. And congratulations on your newborn, strange celebrity people.

While most of us are looking to name babies Rachel or Jack or Pete or Julia, when it comes to horse racing, many of us are Kanye and the Kardashian lady.

Kendall Hansen sure is. After all what would Hansen be without his owner?

Who would name a horse Putthebabiesdown? We have one.

Ninja Cat - one of my personal favorites - is neither a cat, and to the best of my knowledge he's not a ninja either. But so we have it.

Drunken Spider - a low level gelding now at Suffolk - is probably one of the funniest named horses in the land.

Billyjojimbob, owned by our twitter friend @aprilfuel, won the Elitlopp in Sweden where everyone must've been saying "what's up with these Canadians?"

Maybe the Cockeyed Rooster is cockeyed, but I've seen him race, and he sure as hell isn't a rooster.

One of the most fun things about buying a horse is naming him or her and we can be as wacky and crazy as we want. That's more than fine. As long as our brown and bay and grey and roan friends get their carrots and good care, they seem pretty happy. And they don't have to go to school and stand for attendance when their name is called.