1. The first name is the registered herd name of the owner or lessor of the dam (in the case of no registered herd name, the last name of the owner is often assigned). Herd names must be unique.

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2. The second name is the given name of the sire. As no two studs are allowed to possess the same given name, you can tell exactly who a horse's sire was at a glance.

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3. The final name is actually the horse's given name and for mares and geldings, the only restrictions are that it must start with the particular letter assigned for that year, and that the three names combined do not match any other horse. Stallions of course have the added restriction of no duplicate given names.

 

Letters are assigned sequentially every year and all foals for that year will have a given name starting with that letter. For example, the letter for 2022 is J, so all foals born this year will have a given name that starts with J.

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Historically certain letters were skipped to avoid confusion when tattooing, but with the advent of microchips, this practice has been disccontinued.

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In addition to this, all registered names are limited to 30 characters, spaces included.

 

So if you've been bitten by the Canadian Horse bug and are thinking about breeding, choose your herd name carefully!