Learn English – the possessive form of a singular noun ending with a plural s

grammatical-numbernamespossessives

I would tend to treat a company name as singular and would therefore write the possessive form with 's. Now, my company refers to its international operations by placing the country name behind the company name; think: "Coca Cola USA" or "Coca Cola Germany". In these examples I would write, in similar fashion, "Coca Cola Germany's workers are happy". Unfortunately, we also operate in a number of countries that have plural names; think: Netherlands and Cayman Islands. What is the possessive form in these cases? Is it "Coca Cola Netherlands' workers are happy" or "Coca Cola Netherlands's workers are happy"? I nudge towards the latter being grammatically correct, however reckon the former to be more generally accepted — or easier on the eye. I'm not a native English speaker, so I am not always entirely capable of assessing what is "accepted" or "sounds right".

Best Answer

This is an area where English usage is very unsettled.

Generally when a proper name ends in s and looks like a plural, it’s at least acceptable to use just the apostrophe without an additional sNetherlands’s definitely looks odd to me. Since Netherlands is an originally plural word treated as a singular, there’s an especially strong case for not adding the apostrophe-s.

Similarly, I’d say “Lever Brothers’ workers” when talking about the soap company rather than “Lever Brothers’s workers”, even though we'd say “Lever Brothers is” in the US.

Related Topic