Jenny writes:<\/p>\n
No, I’m not pregnant. ;) I was just reminded about something by today’s post that might be a good topic for discussion.<\/p>\n
The issue of plural sounding first names and surnames. For example, I really liked the name Miles. I think it sounds good with my last name: Miles Jacobs. But what about when you need to talk about possession? The ball belonging to Miles? That ball is Miles’s Jacobs’s? Gah!<\/p>\n
Also, I know that wasn’t proper punctuation above, but honestly, I’ve never been clear about how to do it right. I’m not sure what exactly I am asking you to address, but I always enjoy your take on things. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I totally agree: this is one of the main problems of names that end in S. When I worked in a daycare, we had a boy in our class named James, and my co-worker wrote “Jame’s Cubby.” Er?<\/p>\n
More typically, people get confused because they memorized a “things ending in S vs. things not<\/span> ending in S” rule rather than the “plural vs. singular” rule they should have memorized. So they treat a singular-name-ending-in-S as if it were plural, because it ends in S: James’ Cubby, Miles’ Cubby. But in fact, singulars get an apostrophe-S even if those singulars end in S: it’s James’s Cubby, or Charles’s Cubby, or Ross’s Cubby (Triple S Award!). And in the case of Miles Jacobs, it would be either Miles’s Cubby or Miles Jacobs’s Cubby: one possessive apostrophe per unit, and “Miles Jacobs” is one unit.<\/p>\n
And yet, saying it out loud, we’d probably say it as if it were Miles Jacobs’ Cubby—just because we tend to do that verbally when we run into the “zezzes” sound. This is probably why there’s that weird exception that Jesus gets to be a plural possessive (Jesus’ Cubby), even though that is totally nuts: everyone felt weird about saying “Jesuzzes,” especially during responsive readings or The Lord’s Prayer where everyone was saying it together and sounded like a hive of oversize bees, and so they made a group decision to let it be “in Jesus’ name.” My guess is that that decision lead to a LOT of confusion: you can only see “Jesus’ name” so many times before you start writing “James’ Cubby.”<\/p>\n
Here’s a trick for remembering how to make a first-name-ending-in-S possessive: pretend it doesn’t<\/span> end in S. If we were talking about the cubby belonging to Adam, we’d say Adam’s Cubby: we added an apostrophe and an S to the name. We do the same for the cubby belonging to Lucas, and it’s Lucas’s Cubby.<\/p>\n
But! All this is to say YES, it’s a problem. “Miles’s Cubby” both looks and sounds more awkward than “Michael’s Cubby,” and it’s the kind of thing that causes problems for many people. It may be one of the reason ending-in-S names often make my finalist list but so far haven’t made it to any of my babies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jenny writes: No, I’m not pregnant. ;) I was just reminded about something by today’s post that might be a good topic for discussion. The issue of plural sounding first names and surnames. For example, I really liked the name Miles. I think it sounds good with my last name: Miles Jacobs. But what about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reference"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Kj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9798,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6715\/revisions\/9798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}