Tuesday, November 1, 2011

A Melbourne Cup Post

I don't live in Melbourne, but my work does a Melbourne Cup thing anyway. Everyone brings in nibbles (I bought choc-chip mars bar cookies), and we do sweeps and whatnot. I didn't win. Nor did I win on the actual bet I made at the TAB. I'm not a gambling person, so my system consists of putting $5 on the horse with the biggest odds, because I figure if it loses, I've only lost five dollars, but if it wins, I've made a bunch of money. So far this has failed me, but one day it may work.

As I was looking at the names of horses, I started wondering how people come up with the name for their horse. When I name pets, I name them after TV characters from shows I watch. To me this makes sense, but it does lead to me being asked questions like "Hey, why do you have a fish named Tami Taylor?".

Speaking of, I'm probably getting more goldfish soon, and I can't decide whether to name them Fauxlivia and Lincoln Lee, or Pete and Myka.

Back to the horses, some of the names seem really non-horselike to me. Lost In The Moment & At First Sight both sound like they could be crappy over the top romantic comedies. Probably starring Kate Hudson.
As for the winner, Dunaden, I wouldn't want to name my horse something that could be shortened to Dunny.

Although now that I think about it, if I were raising a horse specifically to be in horse races, I probably would deliberately give it a name that would be really embarrassing for an announcer to call. Just because it would make me laugh.

4 comments:

River said...

I forgot it was Melbourne Cup day until about lunch time. Didn't make any bets either.
I agree, some horse names are weird and very un-horsey.

Buy four fish and use all names. Problem solved.

Kath Lockett said...

I'd call one Ruprecht after my favourite Steve Martin character (go and find an ancient copy of 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels')

Windsmoke. said...

Some horses names are nicknames so i've heard :-).

Jayne said...

I liked Niwot which was To Win backwards.
Shows someone was using their head and humour a little ;)