It’s Your Last Name, Are You Using It Wrong?

January 15, 2018 – Like me, I’m sure you’ve seen it all.  Friends who sign their Christmas cards with funky spellings, or sign themselves up for neighborhood responsibilities oddly, have a welcome mat that doesn’t look right or RSVP for their family with weird punctuation. I did a little survey of the Christmas cards we received this past month.  The vast majority of senders sign with a version of from “Bert, Sue, and little Mikey”.  Simple: no last names, no plurals, no confusion.

It’s the pluralizing that messes folks up.

But those plural goof-ups are easily corrected. I shall attempt to simplify how to pluralize your last name.  Three little tips might help:

Tip #1.  Making a last name plural never involves an apostrophe. The members of the Johnson and Smith families, for instance, are the Johnsons and the Smiths, not the Johnson’s and the Smith’s. Never use an apostrophe to make ANYTHING plural.  Not for a name, a noun, or a pronoun. Apostrophes are for two uses:  possessives and contractions.  Possessive is “Bob’s car is dirty.”  Contraction is “Bob’s going to the store.” (The apostrophe substitutes for the “i” in is.) If there’s a meeting of many men whose name is Bob, and you want to pluralize Bob, then you write, “All the Bobs were gathered in the auditorium.”  No apostrophe for the plural. (Only exception for this is the apostrophe for plural letters like, “I got all A’s and B’s” and “cross your t’s and dot your i’s.”)

Tip #2.  If you’re making that Christmas card and you’re unsure, just say, “The Smith Family” and don’t worry about the plural.  Just keep it singular, like: “Merry Christmas from The Jones Family”.  Ta-da!  Or use your family members’ first names: “Merry Christmas from Sally, Stephen, and Maybelle”.

Tip #3.  So how DO you make your last name plural?  For most names, add an -s to make them plural.  For names that end in ch, s, sh, ss, x, and z, add -es to make them plural.  There is an exception to this rule: if your last name ends in ch but is pronounced with a hard /k/ sound, like the word monarch, add only an -s rather than -es.  With names that end in y, you don’t use ies – like we do with the noun “baby” which becomes “babies”.  Kennedy becomes Kennedys.  Just add the -s.

Just remember:  don’t use an apostrophe!

Some examples of the tough ones:

One Bosch becomes two Bosches, One French becomes a family of Frenches, Baines becomes Baineses, Jones becomes Joneses, Bowers becomes Bowerses, Jacobs becomes Jacobses, Nunes becomes Nuneses, Perez becomes Perezes, Wolowitz becomes Wolowitzes, McCandless becomes McCandlesses, Ronaldo becomes Ronaldos, Bach becomes Bachs (that hard “k” sound), Gray becomes Grays, Fleischman becomes Fleischmans (not Fleischmen), Randalls becomes Randallses, Riggins becomes Rigginses, Strauss becomes Strausses.

Your spell check might disapprove of the correct forms, but spell check is wrong on this one. If you understandably find words like Edwardses (for plural Edwards) a little too awkward, consider rewording to avoid the plural. For instance, the Edwardses can become The Edwards Family or The Edwards Household.

You worked so hard on that Christmas card: you made an appointment to get a professional picture or you searched and searched through your family photos to find the best photo of everyone – with no closed eyes, no crying children and no blurry dog – now you can get your last name right, too!

(Credit for the examples and some of the explanations is owed to numerous websites and books, including english.stackexchange.com and grammarist.com, as well as the Harbrace College Handbook.)