This website commemorates the famous horses, important people and other subjects that have had races named after them. Why is the Derby called the Derby? Why did Captain Becher, Oyster Maid and the Rose of Lancaster have races named after them? Find out here.
An important though neglected aspect of horse racing’s rich heritage is the names of the races themselves. The pages on this website are based on races run in 1982, before the growth of commercial sponsorship pushed many old names into oblivion. Click on the first letter of a horse or a person’s name, or a racecourse, to find out why they inspired races to be named after them. Each entry is meant to explain the reason for the race being named.
I have ignored the names of towns and villages near each course that were used for the majority of races before mass sponsorship. Also excluded (usually) are the names of:
- Sponsors
- Current or recent members of the royal family
- Local landmarks
- One-off or brief, occasional changes of venue in my base year of 1982 (eg Queen’s Prize was run at Doncaster instead of Kempton) and otherwise (eg Royal Ascot was held at York in 2005)
- Themed days, eg when all races are named after Derby winners, cricket grounds, sportsmen, pubs, old jockeys, trainers etc
- Cup races
- Local versions of national big races (eg Thirsk Hunt Cup, Sussex National)
- Regimental races
Records may be added to at any time and owing to the volume of material here and the time it has taken to get this far, it will never be completely up to date. Some entries will be years old.
It is impractical to have checked all of the courses at which all of the race names here have appeared. This is especially true of those named after aristocrats who may have dispensed largesse at more than one course, or few occasions, or indeed only once.
It was never intended to create a roll call of winners of each race.
It is also impractical to research afresh all of these 800 or so race names and I have relied a lot on Wikipedia and the online British Newspaper Archive and The Times’ Digital Archive. A few races that post-date my 1982 benchmark have also been included.
Comments, especially in the form of corrections, additional information or new illustrations, are very welcome. Please use the Contact Form in the right hand side bar to contact me privately or the comments facility at the bottom of the page to make a public comment.