grammatical number - Plural name apostrophe position


At my English lesson the native English speaker couldn’t tell what is correct and promised to search it for us!


He told us that if James is one person then we should write



James' Book



but if we had many James he didn't know to tell us what to write...


Any suggestions?



Answer



This is something that's not 100% settled in English orthography, so it tends to be set down in usage guides. For example, here's what the Chicago Manual of Style (14th Ed) has to say:


"6.24 The general rule for the possessive of nouns covers most proper nouns, including most names ending in sibilants."


Examples they give include Kansas's, Ross's land, and Jones's reputation. Exceptions include Jesus' and Moses'.


By this, it would seem reasonable that possessive of the plural would be James', as with common nouns.


Note that this is not the entire story, but might (?) be the relevant bits.


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