The Importance of a Name

Names are extremely important to me. I love picking then out and always want them to have meaning for me as well as being unique, pretty, and not too difficult to spell or say. When I first got Katai she was a project so I didn't use the names I was saving for MY horse at that point, instead I had my mom help.

I still remember sitting at the MN Renaissance Festival with my mom and having her give me the name of a character in a book by Jim Butcher that she had just read. She spelled it out for me, as Katai, on a small piece of paper and I liked the way it looked and sounded as well as the information she gave me about the character. To my mom's credit, she told me to check the spelling but I didn't and just went ahead with that name.

Awhile later when I read the book I realized that my mom had misspelled it and it was actually spelled Kitai. At that point I looked up the meaning of both words.

Well yeah, I probably would have chosen the second but at that point Katai was stubborn and it was so completely adorably cute that my mom had mistakenly named my pony stubborn that I stuck with the spelling she'd given me.

Then as Katai started to improve I started to look forward to coming up with a show name for her. I've always loved the idea of a show name and barn name and the beautiful thing about an unregistered horse was that I'd get to pick out whatever I wanted. I let it go for quite awhile since I wasn't showing but now that I'm at a place where I was ready to come up with something it almost felt too late. I care so much about it since I love Katai so much and wanted something absolutely perfect so it was starting to feel like I couldn't possibly come up with anything good enough for her. 

Won't be long and we'll be back here, this time hopefully with a bit more  relaxation :)

However, this past week I got the idea to crowd source it! I posted on a pony group that I'm part of on Facebook. One of my online friends posted the name Kaida which means little dragon. I ABSOLUTELY loved it but it was so similar and just as short that I decided it wouldn't work. So, now that's a name that I want for my next pony :) Kaida and Katai would be pretty cute (and so adorably confusing haha)

Then another person posted the name Kireina Katai. I loved that it had her name as part of it and since Kireina means beautiful it's sort of like she's named beautifully stubborn which is completely perfect for both of us. I also love the way it sounds kee-ray-nuh kah-ty which is a good bonus. So I'm going with that! I know that the announcer may struggle with it but honestly they might struggle with any name and I'll just spell it phonetically to make it as easy as possible.

I can't wait to send in the entry form with her new show name and at some point get her a new halter plate for her show halter.