The entrance of the eloquently named thoroughbred Rachel Alexandra has done for this year’s Preakness what synthetic testosterone has done for so many aging baseball players—it’s given new life. In a matter of days, Alexandra, a filly, has stolen the spotlight and the jockey off of Mine That Bird, the Kentucky Derby winning colt. It is the first time in the 135-year history of the Triple Crown that a Derby-winning jockey has switched horses for the Preakness, as it were, in midstream. Maybe that’s because Alexandra is a potential super horse, because she’s dominated every race she’s entered this year, won every race of her life in which Calvin Borel was her jockey, and clocked a faster track time at Churchill Downs in the Kentucky Oaks, an all filly race, than any colts did in the next day’s Derby.

Or maybe it’s because her name sounds like it belongs in a Tolstoy novel, and it’s never smart to bet against the Russians in a war, and probably not in a horse race either. That’s what I like to think.

The business of naming thoroughbreds is not one of pure fancy, however. The Jockey Club, established 1894 (with a Vanderbilt as a founding member), governs the process rather like an oligarchy. A horse’s name must first meet a gamut of requirements (more on that later), then receive the club’s approval.

Last summer, because I found horses to be the most beautiful athletes in the world and because the races were exhilarating and the official race drinks lovely, if sweet, I decided to set a novel against a backdrop of horse racing. So the day after the Belmont Stakes, I headed to an exhibit appropriately entitled “The Horse” at the Museum of Natural History, wearing the same seersucker suit I’d donned the day before, and feeling decidedly hungover and bitter about the $20 I lost on Big Brown. I wanted to take notes on the evolution of Equus ferus caballus and its co-evolution with Homo sapiens, but after a few scrawls the dark corridor, broken by false walls and looking altogether like an oversize velvet guncase, got the better of me—I had to sleep, and while reading about how horses enabled Ghengis Khan and the Mongols to conquer Asia, my legs buckled and I nearly fell. That was my cue to nap, so I headed across the street to Central Park.

I’d like to say I dreamt of horses, but probably it was something deadly banal and bizarre. I awoke to an afternoon sun and the words of Hamlet spoken with a Brooklyn accent—a band of thespians had appeared nearby. As I sprinted away from them (or stumbled hurriedly) I checked my notebook. In it was a half-decent drawing of a horse and three words beside it in block print: Godot To Show.

At the time, the name made me feel clever as Krapp, musing over one of his own jokes. But I was also filled with a strong impulse to own a horse.

Now I had no disposable income, and was not about to buy a horse. But I was curious enough to find out whether or not Godot To Show could be a viable moniker (and, after a few solid wins, a multi-million dollar stud brand).

So what does the Jockey Club say? Well, it doesn’t rule against puns. That’s the good news. Here’s what it does rule against: names longer than eighteen characters, including spaces; names consisting only of initials or numbers; names of living or dead people, except with special permission; commercial names, vulgar names, disparaging names; names of other active horses; “permanent names”—that is, names of horses that have won major races. The list goes on, but having checked the current registry against my proposed name, I’ve learned that one active horse is named simply Godot, that horse names have historically included the words Win, Show, and Place, and basically that Godot To Show could qualify, but I can’t know for sure unless I attempt to register a qualifying thoroughbred, and that’s a whole different set of standards (least of which is owning the horse).

So in Saturday’s Preakness, what is the story behind the names of arguably the two most talked about horses?

Mine That Bird gets his in a similar fashion to many people in this world. That is, Mine That Bird is a mishmash of his parents’ names, of Birdstone, his sire, and of Mining My Own, his dam. In a sense, however, Mine That Bird is a play on the mother mining the father of his sperm, and to the best of my knowledge that is a bit more naughty than standard human traditions of naming offspring.

Rachel Alexandra, on the other hand, seems to be a name that came strictly from the whim of the owner. Medaglia d’Oro sired her; Lotta Kim dammed her.

Both horses have, to my unqualified judgment, excellent pedigrees. But Rachel Alexandra should be the favorite—she’s the fastest horse in the field. The question is, can she run against boys? Barring last minute injury, we’ll find out Saturday. And oh, the official drink of the Preakness is a Black-Eyed Susan (2 parts bourbon, 1 vodka, sweet and sour mix and orange juice to taste; garnish with a cherry and slice of orange). It’s named for Maryland’s state flower.

By Thomas McCafferty