Why Are They All Called Roach?
Matthew Barrera Geralt's trusty horse is actually several different horses throughout The Witcher season 1. Here's why he calls them all "Roach."
The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia doesn't have many friends, but his most faithful companion is his trusty horse, Roach. There's just one problem: Geralt has a very long lifespan, and horses have a much shorter lifespan, especially horses that belong to professional monster-hunters. Therefore, while it looks like Geralt is riding the same horse throughout The Witcher season 1, he's actually riding several different horses - all called Roach.
A detail taken from the original Witcher novels by Andrzej Sapkowski is that Geralt names all of his horses Roach. Though Geralt canonically has a preference for mares, in The Witcher Roach is played by a male horse called Zeus, whose genitals are digitally removed in post-production. Zeus plays Roach throughout the show, but The Witcher season 1 begins in 1210 and ends in 1263, so Geralt has likely gone through several Roaches between the first time we see him and the last.
It's somewhat strange that Geralt's best friend (sorry, Jaskier) is a horse, and stranger still that he periodically replaces his best friend with another, similar horse that he gives the same name. However, it makes sense given what we know about Geralt - startng with the fact that he doesn't have a lot of friends, so being his best friend is a low bar to clear. As a witcher he is considered an abomination by most of society, and at around 150 years old he has probably come to regard human lives as fleeting relative to his own. Calling all of his horses Roach is a way for him to maintain a constant in his life, even if that constant occasionally needs to be replaced. "Roach is much more than a horse," said actor Henry Cavill at San Diego Comic-Con 2019. "She's an anchor to Geralt's tried and true self, because he gives that name to every horse he has.... She's the one access point he has to humanity."
Geralt doesn't show much open affection to Roach in the Witcher books. In Baptism of Fire he acquires a new mare and makes a show of deliberating over what to call her before, of course, settling on Roach. He complains about the badly-behaved animal constantly, threatening to get rid of her and replace her with a donkey, but after his group's horses are stolen and then recovered he is quick to confirm that Roach is OK. Another character calls him out for hiding a good heart behind a rough outer shell, saying, "You won’t even give up that skittish mare, you won’t leave her, you won’t exchange her for another, even though you keep threatening to. You aren’t the kind that leaves others behind." Tragically, that particular Roach dies towards the end of Baptism of Fire.
As for what Roach's name means, it's not a reference to a cockroach but to a common species of small fish. In the original Polish editions of the books the horse is called Płotka, the diminutive form of the word płoc, making it more a term of endearment (like calling the horse "little fish" or "Roachy"). Though Geralt probably didn't put much thought into the name, "Roach" does seem to embody how he feels about his horse(s). It indicates that they are common and not extraordinary, but also reveals that Geralt really does care about them... even if he'd never admit it.
