Affixes or Kennel Names as the Kennel Club now prefer to style them, have been an integral part of naming dogs since the mid 1880s when the practice of adding roman numerals to simple names made the addition of the owner’s Identity a practical alternative.

In the early days Kennel Names would frequently refer to a location, whether town, village, district or estate with which the kennel’s owner was associated. By the mid 1890s the Kennel Club were offering to protect these words in perpetuity, reserving their use to those who were prepared to pay the necessary fees.

 

So popular was this new service, approximately 400 were included in the first list
of Prefixes and Affixes published in the Stud Book of 1895, that the service was
amended to allow for lifetime compounding during the early years of the twentieth
century. This curtailed to 15 year some 70 years later, and between these two
events it also became a condition of acceptance that Affixes, as they were now
referred to, should be a made up word rather than a dictionary word or proper
noun, which explains why modern kennel names are invariably some form of
anagram.

 

By the 1980s new applications for Affixes were increasing rapidly and the list of protected word growing at an alarming rate, making the choice of new affixes and the naming of dogs difficult. It was these two factors which prompted the Kennel Club to first try curbing the number of new Affix application, which only increased the problem of naming puppies, and then to overhaul the whole Affix registration system. From the beginning of 1986 the compounding of an affix was suspended
in favour of annual maintenance, and although existing compounding arrangements would be honoured they would no longer be eligible for renewal once current contracts expired.

 

It had long been possible for Breed Clubs or Breed Councils to request special protection for any affix which they considered of paramount importance to their breed’s history or development, but in 1986 this arrangement was greatly simplified, allowing any Breed Club or Breed Council to protect those Affixes, where Kennel Club protection had lapsed for whatever reason, which they considered of such importance to their breed’s history and development that they should never appear on current dogs of that or any other breed.

Many of the original Rough Collies affixes remain protected, frequently maintained, although not necessarily used, by members of the original owners’ family. Where, for whatever reason, this is not possible and an affix has been considered of significant importance either the Rough Collie Breed Council, or the Breed Club most closely associated with the original owner now provides this protection.

Occasionally full protection can not be undertaken, in such cases special arrangements can frequently be negotiated whereby the Kennel Club refuse to allow current owners to use the kennel name on a Rough Collie.