Adding Possession to Business Names

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is David in Indianapolis.

Hi, David.

Thanks for having me on.

You’re welcome.

What’s on your mind?

Well, I’ve been curious for a number of years. I moved to Indianapolis about 13 years ago and been struck by the practice of taking a company, specifically Eli Lilly, and referring to it in the possessive form as Lillies in the way you might, like a business like Macy’s or McDonald’s that has the possessive form, but with a company like Lilly that doesn’t.

And recently when I was in Chicago, I was talking to a friend who pointed out to me the new Cook County Hospital, which is named for John Stroger, and he mentioned that it’s referred to now as Stroger’s Hospital, again with the possessive.

So I wonder whether this was a Midwestern phenomenon, or I thought with Lilly maybe it was something dating back many years and just an artifact from history, but apparently not, given the example from Stroger Hospital in Chicago.

What an interesting question. David, it’s definitely widespread throughout the Midwest. This is a question that comes up with some frequency, so I’ve done some backgrounding on this before.

And what’s interesting is I think that much of America would be surprised to find that the store is actually JCPenney and not JCPenney’s. My mother, I know, calls it pennies. She goes to pennies.

Oh, yeah. I did, too. She does not go to JCPenney. She doesn’t go to penny. She goes to pennies.

It’s not pennies?

It’s not pennies.

But you’ll find where I grew up in Missouri, we did this with Walmart and Kroger and Kmart. Kroger is a regional grocery chain.

Oh, yeah, we did that. Kroger’s and Walmarts and Kmart’s. There are some stores that you would never do that to. Nobody ever said Targets, as far as I know. And nobody ever said Sears’s, because Sears already has the S on it.

One of the theories that linguists and lexicographers have about this is that there is kind of a modeling off of the, say, the small stores that are owned by an individual. What they call the kind of application of the genitive case, which means they’re making it sound like it’s possessive.

So because McDonald’s, for example, and Macy’s, the two examples that you gave, those are actually possessive. And there are many examples in any kind of decently sized town of store names that are possessive. So-and-so’s, whatever, you know, Joe’s Crab Shack, whatever it is.

And so by that model, people are putting it on there. But the other thing is we also have the family model. If you go over to somebody’s house, a family’s house, you say, I’m going over to the Rogers’ house or I’m going over to the Smith’s house. I’m going over to the Smiths. We’re just abbreviating. I’m going over to the Heath’s house, whatever it is, right?

And so there’s that model as well. So we kind of have these examples that maybe we’re overgeneralizing, implying to these places that don’t need the possessive. They don’t actually need to take it, but we do it anyway.

It’s a really great example of colloquial speech. And it’s so common that people call it out and notice it all the time. And half of them are interested in the phenomenon and half of them are annoyed by it.

That’s interesting that you said it even carries over to the companies that aren’t named for a person like Walmart or Kmart.

That’s right. It’s one of those places that’s begging for a little more exploration. I appreciate your help on this.

Well, thank you for your call.

Thanks, David.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this. If you say a business name that way, call us, email us, tell us why. The number is 1-877-929-9673, and the email address is words@waywordradio.org.