OK.... I am about to upset some of you. These are my personal opnionions about naming purebred cattle. I believe in cow families and I believe they are extremely important in any breed ... and to any breeder. I feel all purebred females should belong to a female lineage, and this should be in their"official name". You can have any number of nicknames you want... I could care less, but the family name is very important to me. I really find it hard to trace a pedigree of an animal that has every female named something different. One of my donor cows comes from the Picture Perfect cow family. Her name is Presto... but every female calf she has gets named Picture Perfect... with my herd prefix and her tattooo number and letter. If I purchase a female which comes from a line of non discript females in her background, each of which have their own name, I will trace back as far as I can and see if I can find if there is a cow family in her background. Most times I can find one, but not always. If I can't I start a new line and all the female calves will carry this name. Like I said, cow families are extremely important to me , and I know they are also extemely important to many others.
I think there are cow families in every breed that almost all breeders identify with. In the Shorthorn breed, for example, the Augusta Pride tribe are a very important line of females. I will never understand it but I have seen some breeders change the name of a calf that is born from an Augusta Pride female. I JUST DON"T UNDERSTAND THIS LOGIC! Anyone who does this probably reduced the value of their heifer as well. I just don't get it! There are many other examples.
On the other hand, I think every bull should have his own name. A bull can sire numerous calves in his lifetime and he should have his own name. Some people, including myself, use names that start with the year letter. All my bulls born in 2007 had names starting in "T" The only time this becomes a problem is in years like 2008, when the year letter is "U". I could probably think up enough U names but I also thionk a bull deserves a decent name.... not just a meaningless name that starts in the year letter. I will probably use a set of names that I have not used from other years this year and go back to using the pther system next year again... that is , unless I can get real inventive and think of enough good names that start in "U".
Maybe I am old fashioned( as well as being old!!) but it actually frustrates me some when I see cow family names being messed with. I could care less if they also have a nickname, in fact I think it is actually very good to have nicknames for some of the better females. I just strongly believe that cow families are important, in purebred breeding stock. In the clubbie world, or in commercial breeding stock, you can call them whatever you wish. Usually these cattle are a blending of genetics from more than one breed, so cow families are not as important.