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 when you need to talk about possession? The ball belonging to Miles? That ball is Miles's Jacobs's? Gah!
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.
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?
More typically, people get confused because they memorized a "things ending in S vs. things not 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.
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."
Here's a trick for remembering how to make a first-name-ending-in-S possessive: pretend it doesn't 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.
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.
