Spaced Out by Names of Horses

On Kentucky Derby day, a horse running in the 10th race at Churchill Downs was named this:

Opentotheright.

Another horse, in Saturday’s first race, was named this:

Spectaculardynasty.

For the few months in California, meanwhile, bettors have been spending big bucks on a horse named this:

Itsallgreektome.

And just the other day, a friend of mine gave me a tip on a horse named this:

Withallprobability.

Now, I ask you:

Whattheheckisthis?

Is there some particular reason my Racing Form suddenly resembles my optician’s eye chart?

Have the owners of thoroughbred race horses been spending too much time playing Yahtzee?

Is this some weird new form of dyslexia, causing people to run their sentences together into one long word?

Hihoneyhowareyou?

Finehowareyou?

Whatever happened to horses with regular old horse names like Trigger, Champion, Silver or Mr. Ed?

Kevin Costner’s mount in “Dances With Wolves” had a nice, simple name, as I recall. Cisco, I think it was.

Now, most of the people Kevin encountered had names like Stands With a Fist--or maybe it was Standswithafist--and Wind in His Hair. But if Kevin had another horse, I doubt if he would have called him Runs Really Fast or Rides Really Well or anything like that.

Back then, you just called your stallion Big Fella.

Are today’s horse owners running out of ideas?

Maybe they could use one of those baby-name books for new parents that suggest, you know, christening your new daughter Kimberli with an “i” or maybe Mychal with a “y” just to be different from everybody else in the maternity ward?

I mean, what if moms and dads started running out of regular names and started naming their children Earvinjohnson or Larrybird or Bojackson?

OK, I know we already have had plenty of one-name superstars. There has been Madonna, Cher, Prince, Sting, Sinbad, Pele (the soccer player), Socrates (the soccer player, not the philosopher), Plato (the philosopher), Pluto (the dog) and, of course, Charo. There also is a rapper-actor named Ice-T and the actress-entertainer Ann-Margret, but I do not know if they count as two words or one, being hyphenates.

Having looked over the list of 116 previous Kentucky Derby winners, I could only find one horse whose name was scrambled into a Scrabble word.

Middleground, 1950.

Oh, and I do seem to recall a pretty good horse who never won the Derby named Seabiscuit, although I am not quite certain why he was called that. Are there such a thing as seabiscuits? Are they made by Nabisco? Are they oyster crackers? Do they float?

Explain to me why certain other owners of Derby champions neglected to name their horses Sundaysilence or Seattleslew or Foolishpleasure.

To be honest, I don’t know much about horses. I’m a car guy.

(By the way, I call my current car: Gasguzzler. My old car was named: Basictransportation.)

But I have a question for those who do own horses.

When you talk to your horse, what do you say?

Like, if your horse is named Ferdinand, I imagine you rub his nose or his fetlocks or whatever those things above his feet are called and say: “Good boy, Ferdinand.” Or: “Want some sugar, Ferdy?”

But what do you people say to Itsallgreektome?

“Whoa, Itsallgreektome! Whoa!”

“Here, Itsall! Here, boy!”

“Daddy, can I go out and ride Itsallgreektome for a while?” “OK, son. But you be careful.”

No, I have no idea where or how most horses get their handles.

One of the horses that ran in the Kentucky Derby--in fact, I think he’s still running--was called Forty Something. Two words. But the TV show is called “thirtysomething.” I am so confused.

You might be interested to know that Forty Something finished in last place--thirtysomething lengths behind Strike The Gold.

And that’s another thing. Why was the winning horse not called Strikethegold? And why do you give the name Strike The Gold to the son of Alydar of Majestic Gold? Why not call it Alygold?

Were they worried about being confused with another of Alydar’s sons that ran in the same Derby, Alydavid? Would Alydar himself have wanted it that way? Or would Mrs. Alydar have objected?

Personally, I prefer George Foreman, who has a whole bunch of children, every one of them named George Foreman, except the girls.

If I owned a horse, I’d call it Bill or George or Sue. These other names, they might as well be Greek to me.