la xunre poi pendo mi

This means "Red Friend of Mine", where the whole phrase is the name. If you want to say "Red who is my friend (as opposed to someone else named "Red")", when only "Red" is the name, it must be la xunre ku poi pendo mi. A relative phrase that comes before the ku in a name is part of the name, and one that comes after is not. See The Complete Lojban Language, chapter 8.6 (examples 10 and 11, p. 179).

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Just because you can elide them in 99.9% of cases doesn't mean that you can't forget about your friends, the elidable terminators.