Grammar – Correct Possessive Form for ‘A Boy’s Name’

grammarpossessives

Which of the following phrases are grammatically correct, meaning "a name for a boy"?

  1. A boy's name.

  2. A boys' name.

  3. A boy name.

  4. A boys name.

Any response would be appreciated.

Best Answer

We commonly write "a boy's name". "Boy's" is a singular possessive. It is a name for one boy.

You could talk about "boys' names", plural. That is, names for many boys.

"A boys' name" is grammatically valid but almost never used in practice. "Boys'" is a plural possessive but "name" is singular, so you would be referring to one name used by many boys. That's certainly logically possible. There are many boys named "John", so we could say "John is a name used by many boys. John is a boys' name." But we just don't normally write this. We still say "boy's name". I suppose you could say we're thinking of one boy at a time. Even if they have a common name, we think of each boy as having his own "copy" of the name. It would be different if it was a single item that they really shared. Like "We have one gym for boys and another gym for girls. This is the boys' gym."

"Boy name" is often used in informal speech, but not in formal speech or writing. One could argue that it is valid: using a noun as an adjective, like "car part". But we just don't do that.

"Boys name" is thus doubly a problem. There's the singular vs plural problem that I discussed with "boys' name", plus the noun vs adjective problem.

So to put it briefly: Use "boy's name".

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