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The possessive form of an English noun, or more generally a noun phrase, is made by suffixing a morpheme which is represented orthographically as ' s (the letter s preceded by an apostrophe), and is pronounced in the same way as the regular English plural ending (e)s: namely, as / ɪ z / when following a sibilant sound (/ s /, / z /, / ʃ /, / ʒ /, / tʃ / or / dʒ /), as / s / when following ...
For ease of use, the [i] in front of the last name, and the ending _ve, were dropped. If the last name ends in [a], then removing the [j] would give the name of the patriarch or the place, as in, Grudaj - j = Gruda (place in MM). Otherwise, removing the whole ending [aj] yields the name of founder or place of origin, as in Lekaj - aj = Lek(ë).
The Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition): "The possessive of most singular nouns is formed by adding an s, and the possessive of plural nouns (except for a few irregular plurals that do not end in s) by adding an apostrophe only...The general rule covers most proper nouns, including names ending in s, x, or z, in both their singular and ...
Timothy Pulju, a senior lecturer in linguistics at Dartmouth College, said that until the 17th or 18th century, the possessive of proper names ending in S — such as Jesus or Moses — often was ...
In addition, the apostrophe is used for plurals where the singulars end with long vowels, e.g. foto's, taxi's; and for the genitive of proper names ending with these vowels, e.g. Anna's, Otto's. These are in fact elided vowels; use of the apostrophe prevents spellings like fotoos and Annaas.
Some people extend this use of the apostrophe to other cases, such as plurals of numbers written in figures (e.g. "1990's"), words used as terms (e.g. "his writing uses a lot of but's"). However, others prefer to avoid this method (which can lead to confusion with the possessive -'s ), and write 1990s , buts ; this is the style recommended by ...
For example, Jacques is pronounced with with an apostrophe "s" at the end as merely "Jacques," and not "Jacqueses," as that is an uncomfortable pronunciation, and therefore it is only necessary to include an apostrophe. A word pronouneced as "es" after the ending "s," does include the "'s" at the end, such as "Sampras's" (Samprases).
Articles in this category are concerned with surnames (last names in Western cultures, but family names in general), especially articles concerned with one surname. Use template {} to populate this category. However, do not use the template on disambiguation pages that contain a list of people by family name.