grammatical number - Family name pluralization


When pluralizing family (last) names that also happen to be common English words, does the pluralization follow the same rules as the common word?


For example, "the Smith family" can be pluralized as "the Smiths", but what if the family name is "Wolf" or "Fish"? Would the correct pluralization be "the Wolfs" or "the Wolves"?



Answer



You generally ignore that the underlying word has an irregular plural, so it would be "the Wolfs". (This is the same rule as for irregular words in compounds where they aren't the main noun: "mongooses" is the plural of "mongoose" even though "goose" has an irregular plural.)


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