Umamusume names: the method in the madness

One of the first things that often weirds people out about Umamusume is the names. There's no getting around it: racehorse names are weird. But there's actually some method in the madness.

The most visible sign of this is kanmuri-mei, or kanmei for short - literally "crown-names". These are like family names or clan names. Typically, horses that share a kanmei are owned by the same person or company - for instance, all the Mejiro horses were owned by the Mejiro Farm, although they were not all close relatives. Likewise, all the Narita horses were owned by Mr. Yamaji Hidenori. Some kanmei are represented by only one Umamusume in game, such as Tosho (Sweep) and Seiun (Sky), but it's possible that more might show up in future.

There are some things to know about kanmei.

• Not all horses with two-word names have a kanmei. Rice Shower and Special Week are examples of horses with a two-word given name and no kanmei.
• Kanmei are usually placed before the horse's given name, as with Mejiro McQueen; but this is not universal - Silence Suzuka's kanmei is Suzuka, not Silence.
• Kanmei are not exclusive; a horse from a different stable may happen to have a kanmei in its name, especially if that kanmei is a common word. For instance, Sakura High Speed (not in this game) has no association with the Sakura kanmei (Bakushin O, Chiyono O, Laurel).
• Horses with the same owner don't have to share a kanmei (Seiun Sky and Nishino Flower, for instance), and indeed don't necessarily have a kanmei at all: Vodka didn't inherit the Tanino kanmei, allegedly because her owner wanted her to rise above her heritage.

So where does that leave us?

One conclusion is that it's usually not a good idea to refer to a character solely by their kanmei, because things could get confusing once other characters with the same kanmei show up - Sakura Bakushin O's given name is Bakushin O or Bakushin for short, not Sakura, because there are at least two other Sakuras waiting in the wings (one of whom is a fairly important character in Cinderella Grey). This sometimes bites Japanese fans too; everyone got used to calling Gold City just "City", and then the devs announced that Tap Dance City and Espoir City were going to be umafied. Cue migraines all round (Mood lowered to Good; unable to raise mood).

Some fans, especially in the West, like to use initials like SC and FM to refer to characters; this is not terrible but most people ditch that habit as soon as they're confronted with Narita Top Road and Admire Vega.

Often, nicknames given by the real horse's fans are adopted (such as "Unsu" for Seiun Sky), or adapted (such as "Ayabe" instead of "Adobe" for Admire Vega).

But ultimately the rules can be broken; everybody refers to Maya and Suzuka by their kanmei because - let's face it - it's really weird to call them "Top Gun", "Silence", or "Susuzu" (the last being what the real Silence Suzuka's fans used to call him).