When I was a kid, naming my model horses was one of the best parts of getting a new horse. I thought carefully, took inspiration from the environment, and maintained a list of possible horse names that I doodled on my various notebooks and paper book covers in class. They all got names that made me incredibly happy as a child, though decades later, I look at some of the choices and roll my eyes, especially for ye olde carpet herd.

Maybe that’s why it’s harder for me now, thinking about how long they might stick. Or maybe it’s just that I have less time for daydreaming and many more opportunities to acquire truly breathtaking OF horses. Breyerfest especially tends to concentrate all my acquisitions into a single binge week, and suddenly there’s not one horse to name but several, especially with the stablemate sets.

He’s cute, so neatly painted! So amazing what they can do with Stablemates now! But what to name him?

My taste in names has changed too - from enjoying fun cute phrases, which were in vogue in the hunter-jumper circles I inhabited as a teenager - to being more thoughtful and breed appropriate. My new Murgese stallion, brilliantly sculpted by Sarah Minkiewicz-Breunig, how do people in the breed name them? Or Kelly Sealey’s new Highland Pony stallion sculpture? With the Highland Ponies, they typically have a breeder or farm name prefix - should I appropriate one for him or give him one of my own? Do I plan to have more Highland Ponies that might also need that prefix?

I love the energy “Rowan,” the new Highland Pony sculpted by Kelly Sealy, brings!

For my new Hagen-Renaker Tennessee Taffy, lovingly brought back by Kristina Lucas Francis, she’s so reminiscent of my full scale Morgan mare that I thought about using her name for the model. But will I regret that? Do I want to do a proper portrait of my mare?

Hagen-Renaker “Taffy” - silver bay ceramic Morgan mare sculpted by Maureen Love and produced by Hagen-Renaker Tennessee

When I make a custom, often I have had it named before I even start the work. It’s part of the concept. But fully formed model horses sometimes take a bit more time.

It still happens to me, sometimes, that the name jumps right out at me. My new Premier Club mule sculpted by Laura Skillern Sailer had to be Muffinbyte, I knew, as soon as that name came across my field of vision.

For more generic horses, I tend now to prefer one word names, more human-friendly, more like a name that is the same for a barn name as well as a registered or show name. No doubt that’s a result of 15 years with my beloved Thoroughbred eventing mare Farli.

I don’t tend to like names that are a mouthful or more than three words, but again I do tend to bow down to what is ordinary for a particular breed. Certain breeds tend to have elaborate names for whatever reason, and it seems right to respect that. But if you want to name your Highland Pony stallion “Kevin” I totally respect that!

So what is your Theory of Naming? What kinds of names do you like? And do you ever freeze and panic at a model horse show wondering what to name a new acquisition a few minutes before the class starts?