How come the little apostrophe should become a headline in the National Press? Because Councillor Bronk asked the assembled Winchester Council about a road sign in Twyford:
St Marys Terrace
or
St Mary’s Terrace?
The assembled council, bless’em, got the answer wrong. Is it a terrace belonging to St Mary or a terrace named after St Mary? That gives you the answer.
It’s the same with Chandlers Ford, the name of a suburb of Eastleigh, not a ford belonging to Mr Chandler.
The terrace is a private gravelled cul de sac of about six houses, so I suppose the residents can call it what they like, but the rest of us will demand that it is a name unique to Twyford, is not vulgar and is written in English. One might suppose, in the interests of sympathy with Ukraine, some people might like the name to be written in Cyrillic script:
Ст Марйс Терраце
Perhaps it could be written in Arabic or Hebrew in sympathy with the Middle East, whose languages read from right to left. There is a government document recommending the rules for naming places and roads (GeoPlace Data Entry Conventions and Best Practice for Addresses policy); it’s mostly common sense (https://www.geoplace.co.uk/local-authority[1]resources/street-naming-and-numbering/snn-best-practice/apostrophes).
Oh, the trouble the apostrophe causes greengrocers with their potato’s or potatoe’s or potatos’ and tomato’s. Don’t use an apostrophe for a plural. Sometimes, the rule must be broken. She got three A’s and two U’s in her exams, reads better than three As and two Us. But she qualified in the 2020s, not in the 2020’s.
Markets are a problem, too,
Farmers Market
Farmer’s Market
There must be more than one farmer – Farmers’ Market.
Please choose the first because it is a trading group of farmers.
To get back to Mary, her photograph. Mary’s photograph – does she own the photograph, or is it a photograph of Mary owned by her boyfriend? Mary’s photograph is ambiguous. One must find a more precise form of words.
Who are the language mavens? Maven is a Yiddish word meaning expert and used disparagingly by Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct. The French have Académie Française, which declares which words are allowed in French. The Academie decided that NATO should be OTAN in French, but the French mostly ignore them and use borrowed words like le fortnight (les deux semaines or la quinzaine); I prefer the latter as it gives one extra day’s holiday. Then there is ordinateur – computer and couriel – email.
We don’t have an academy but a body of editors and authors, dictionaries and style manual compilers who set the prescriptive rules by common consent. The rest of us go along with them – mostly.
Who will you send Christmas cards to? Oops, the language mavens will be after me for ending a sentence with a preposition. To whom will you send Christmas cards? Are Taffy and Myfanwy the Jones’s or the Jones? Cards for the Kennedys, Kennedy’s or the Kennedies. If you can’t decide, send to the Kennedy Family. When it comes to diaries, it’s Bridget Jones’s diary. Benjamin Dreyer in Dryer’s English noted a headline Donald Trump, JR,.’s love for Russian dirt. He referred to that as ‘period-comma-apostrophe bullshit’ but admits that is not a precise technical term. It should read Donald Trump Jr’s love…
Language evolves in speech first – we was – he don’t have no money – she’s growed up – I can’t get no satisfaction.
Youse gotta agree – ain’t it fun that language changes?
The vernacular works in speech but not in writing, but may become absorbed in time. Written slang grates and snags the golden thread between author and reader. That’s why there are rules.
Extract from the council minutes:
QUESTION 4 From: Councillor Bronk To: The Leader (Cllr Tod)
23 February 2023
“Residents of St Mary’s Terrace (and elsewhere) in Twyford were surprised and disappointed to find that when their street name plate was replaced last year it was missing an apostrophe. When this assumed error was questioned, the answer given was that the Council’s policy required that all new street name signs must omit any apostrophe formerly shown on such signage. I would appreciate a statement by or on behalf of the Leader to clearly articulate the council (or council’s) position on the use of apostrophes on road signs in the Winchester District, including the reason for any omission of apostrophes and when and by whom (or which body) this decision was taken”.
Very enjoyable and thought provoking!
The complexity of the English language!
My father would have questioned “to clearly articulate .. “
Ah, the split infinitive. ‘To boldly go’. The mavens say you are not supposed to do it because the Romans never did, and much of our language developed from Latin. Actually, you can’t do it in Latin because the infinitive is only one word – to go is cedo. There’s no space for boldly – audacter.
And all the time through my recent blog I was writing “Chandler’s Ford”and not “Chandlers Ford” because I was told the former was the accepted version!
Hi Rick,
Chandler’s Ford – ths spelling is correct. I disagree with Mike’s view on the spelling and I have shared my view with him. 🙂
Great post, Mike.
Members (and ex-members) of a well-known first aid charity groan when they hear it referred to as “St John’s Ambulance”. It is “St John Ambulance”
Surely if the road were named after St Mary, it would be neither St Mary’s Terrace nor St Marys Terrace, but just St Mary Terrace (unless it is named after multiple St Marys (there are multiple St Marys)). Such as Nutbeem Road and Chamberlayne Road in Eastleigh that were named after those respective persons (though as Chamberlayne did own the land, it could have correctly been named Chamberlayne’s).
There are several inconsistencies. St Thomas’ Hospital is one. The hospital was dedicated to St Thomas Becket when he was canonised after his murder in 1170 (I think). It should be St Thomas or St Thomas’s, probably the former.
Guy’s Hospital is correctly called, it can be argued, as Thomas Guy built it with his own money, and he is buried there.
Then there is St James’s Palace, a former leper colony dedicated to St James the Less.
Southampton’s maternity hospital is called Princess Anne Hospital and part of Salisbury Hospital is the Duke of Cornwall Spinal Injury Centre ( I was involved in the discussion of its naming back in 1984).
We tend to add an ‘s’ in speech, as Robert Ryder tells us.