grammatical number - plural of 'Davidovici'


I know someone named Davidovici, pronounced /dəˈvɪɾəvɪtʃ/ (i.e., rhyming with witch. It's from Romanian). How is it pluralized (as, to refer to the family): Davidovicis or Davidovicies?



Answer



The Chicago Manual of Style recommends that when a plural form suggests a false pronunciation, the name is best left unpluralized. (Preferably this would be done by recasting the sentence to avoid the need for pluralization.) Since "Davidovicies" looks like it would naturally be pronounced with "-eez" instead of "-ez", I would recommend avoiding that particular form no matter what. If you must pluralize it, simply adding the 's' looks like the best thing to do.


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