BREEDING FORUM

Posted: **Thu Feb 29, 2024 13:56 pm**

A while back I compared horse name length to ratings and found in my sample of 159,000+ rated horses that horses with a name length of seven letters were the highest rated, and for every increase in name length ratings dropped steadily until the allowed name limit of eighteen letters was reached. The reason is a mystery as I doubt the horses know their names. .......................... Nobody asked me how the initial letter of the horse name and ratings varied so here is the information you were all waiting for. .................. My sample is 152,095 rated horses with an average rating of 77.94. ................ Horses whose names started with X were the lowest ("X" 103 horses; average 76.34 - perhaps due to the small sample size). Next lowest ("J" 2,474; 76.42); ("L" 8,008; 76.62); ("O" 3,009; 76.80); ("W" 4,146; 76.96). ....................... The highest ("Z" 1,238; 80.93); ("V" 2,354; 79.77); ("U" 954; 79.75); ("Y" 724; 79.72); ("E" 4,373; 79.03). ..................... Scrabble experts might see a link between Scrabble high number letters and high or low ratings, but I checked and the Pearson coefficient is 0.0095 i.e. almost no relationship. .............................. There is a bit of a general trend: the start of the alphabet is high (A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I) (64,041; 78.15); the middle is low (I,J,K,L,M,N,O) (35,331; 77.13); the end excluding W,X is high (P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,Y,Z (48,474; 78.33) and the lowest (W,X (4,249; 76.94). ...................... I put the initial letters in black type as I know you all love a bit of black type.