Horse racing is certainly no stranger to oddball horse names. Just the other year Horsey McHorseFace (an homage to boaty mcboatface) gained worldwide attention when he won the Lathan Arthur Thompson Memorial Maiden in Australia. Other funny horse names that have raised anything between a titter and a belly laugh include the likes of Hoarse, Hugh Janus, Oh no it’s my mother in law, magic carpet burns and passing wind.
Funny horse names aren’t just a modern occurrence though. We see that here with a racehorse called Potooooooo born all the way back in 1773. His owner, Willoughby Bertie, already had the bright / strange idea of naming the horse Potatoes. This rather unflattering name was to take another twist though, when Bertie instructed a stable lad to write down the horses name. Instead of writing Potatoes, he wrote down Pot-8-O’s, as in literally the word Pot followed by eight O’s. The owner found this error rather amusing and so instead of correcting it the name stuck. It creates a funny little place for Potoooooooo in history, as the story lives on to this very day!