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I’m sure we’ve covered this before but if we have I’ve forgotten, so apologies in advance, but it occurred to me the other day that despite a reasonable knowledge of French, I haven’t a bull’s notion what these weird compound French racehorse names mean. The same prefixes and suffixes seem to crop up a lot too. Can anyone explain the origin and meaning of such names as Patman and Pablo de Charmil, Ofarel d’Airy and so on and if there’s a system of naming of some kind like in trotting?
some i understand, some i don’t
this one, i do : http://www.racingpost.co.uk/horses/racing_horse_form.sd?horse_id=582345
For A.Q.P.S. (Autre Que Pur Sang) horses, which includes trotters, anglo-arabs, as well as what we would call "half-breds", each year requires a horse’s name to begin with a designated letter of the alphabet. For example, foals of 2002 have names beginning with the letter "O", 2003 "P" and so on.
As for suffixes, they may be the family name of the breeder, or the name of their farm, or the name of the local village. "Collonges", for example, is a place name.
In English, because of the different grammatical structure of the language, prefixes are used, rarely with racehorses, but often with pedigree cats, dogs, cattle etc.
The Aga Khan gives his racehorses names beginning with the same letter as that of their dams.
my favourite horse name ever was Sabin du Loir; we had a French student stay with us one year and she couldn’t explain the origin of it..have always meant to ask about ‘Collonges’….so thanks for info….
The French names are great i think.
Ocean Du Moilin, Lou Du Moulin Mas, Obelix De Longechaux, etc…
All good names.
The "Moulin Mas" suffix comes from the name of a vineyard or farm, I believe, but I might be wrong.
Moulin Mas. Moulin is a mill and Mas is a regional name for a house in Provence. So its a Provincal mill house in my book.
Made In France has to be the best named French bred
.It’s as if the owners pondered for ages about a name and then, as they drank more wine, they just thought to hell with it, let’s just call it A French Horse – classic
Mike
azertyuiop is the topline of a french typewriter,ile find out bout collonge as in neptune………..
Made In France has to be the best named French bred![/quote
I will take you on with "A French Horse" – great name
.It’s as if the owners pondered for ages about a name and then, as they drank more wine, they just thought to hell with it, let’s just call it A French Horse – classic
Mike
That’s probably right, the owner is Sir Clement Freud!
it even beats ‘weareagrandmother’…..or [?]nous sommes unes grande-meres [yes I know the grammar/spelling is a bit wonky!]
azertyuiop is the topline of a french typewriter
I always wondered about that. I made the connection regarding the top line of a keyboard, but was then perplexed as to why the horse wasn’t called ‘Qwertyuiop’!
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I knew that the ever-helpful Wit had done something on this subject, though it took me a while to find it.
https://theracingforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10546&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
azertyuiop is the topline of a french typewriter
I always wondered about that. I made the connection regarding the top line of a keyboard, but was then perplexed as to why the horse wasn’t called ‘Qwertyuiop’!
ha ha yea it took me a long time to work it out it 1st letter on 2nd n 3rd row then rest top line strange really…
Add to Made In France and A French Horse, the French bred placed with Martin Pipe by long standing owners, the Batterham family.
They called it ‘Nice Horse’, thus enabling Pipe to tell the media at his press open day, that ‘Nice Horse is a nice horse’.
AP
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