What's in a name?

The traditions of naming hounds stretch back hundreds of years but there is always room for a touch of innovation and humour

- JAN MENZIES

ORDINARY insomniacs count sheep. Finding themselves unable to sleep, a hunting person lists hound litter names instead: Dauntless and Dainty and Dasher and Dapper; Racket and Random and Ranter and Rapture. The dactylic rhythm soon drifts you off to dream of negotiating trappy rails and soaring over impossible hedges.

As early as 1781, Peter Beckford, in his Thoughts on Hunting, acknowledges that hound names are important – and that while the naming process is fun, it is not easy: ‘Young hounds are commonly named when first put out [to walk], and sometimes indeed, ridiculously enough. Nor is it easy, when you breed many, to find suitable or harmonious names for all; particularly as it is usual to name all the whelps of one litter with the same letter, which to be systematically done should also be the initial letter of the dog that got them or the bitch that bred them.’

Beckford goes on to list more than 800 hound names, from Able to Wreakful, but he is outdone by CFP McNeill, MFH, whose The Unwritten Laws of Foxhunting was first published early in the 20th century. William Bevin of the Cottesmore and the Quorn, says: “McNeill’s is the rarer publication – and he lists at least 5,000 hound names.” Bevin explains today’s naming conventions: “The first thing about a hound name is that it has to be two syllables, or occasionally three, and it should be clear. If you call the hound’s name, it makes it clear which hound you are calling.