According to urban legend, plural words were invented by Grog, a caveman, in 12,000 B.C., to help him ask for more than one donut at his local coffee shop.
He added an “s” to emphasize his strong desire for a baker’s dozen, and the rest is history.
For those of you who weren’t alive during that time, here are the rules for pluralizing family names, beginning with the rules for pluralizing English nouns and proper nouns.
(If you’re an “I don’t care why, just tell me how” sort of person, then skip to the “Plural Family Names” section below. If you’re an “I want to know why so that I’ll always know how” sort of person, then read the whole shebang over the next four minutes of your life.)
Regular Plural Words
- Add “s”: For most words, the plural form is made by adding an “s.”
- Examples: horse – horses, dog – dogs, tree – trees, ladder – ladders, paper – papers, gnome – gnomes.
- Add “es”: For plural words ending in the sound /iz/, add “es.”
- Examples: dish – dishes, fox – foxes, match – matches, crash – crashes, pass – passes, bus – buses, quiz – quizzes.
- Notice that we double the final consonant to protect the short vowel in some words (ex: fuse – fuses but fuss – fusses).
