Plural Business Names

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Debbie from Indianapolis.

Hey, Debbie, welcome to the show.

Hi there, what’s up?

Hey, thanks.

We have a little family difference of opinion about some linguistic issues here, and we are asking for you to referee.

It’s a generational difference.

I am in my early 60s, and I have sons who are in their mid-20s and early 30s.

And I have a tendency, as does my husband, although I think I do it more than he does.

When we are talking about going to a store, primarily a restaurant or like a department store, if the name of that store lends itself, we will make it a plural.

For example, JCPenney, instead of saying, oh, I’m going to go to JCPenney, I will say, I’m going to Penny’s.

My sons just break out in hives.

Say, no, you’re not going to Penny’s, you’re going to JCPenney.

It’s like, well, what’s the difference?

They just do greats.

I do it with restaurants.

There’s a restaurant called The Aristocrat, and I will say, let’s go to aristocrats.

Okay.

And Debbie, are you saying that they are plurals or possessives?

I’m sorry, possessives.

Okay, great.

Yeah, I make it the possessives, not plural.

That was my question.

Let me ask you a question about your sons for a second here.

Let’s say that you have a friend who’s a family that you know, and their last name is Obama, and you’re going to go to their house.

Would your son say, let’s go to the Obamas?

They have a great pool in the backyard.

They would, wouldn’t they?

They would, absolutely.

And they would say that about any last name.

Let’s go to the Barnette’s house.

They have a big TV, right?

And this is what’s happening here.

Really, it is.

We are treating some names of some businesses as if they were proper nouns.

Exactly.

And we are using them in a possessive to refer to the Penny’s store, the Penny’s lot, the Penny’s outlet, or whatever it is, without naming the thing that’s being possessed, just like if we were talking about a family’s home.

And without saying the.

Yeah, we’re going to.

I will do that, but they won’t.

Interesting.

Yeah, we would use the definite article if we were talking about a family, as Martha noted here.

But in general, this is pretty consistent throughout the United States.

There are large pockets and swathes of people who say Walmarts and Kroger’s and all the different names because they kind of act like the proper noun of a place.

Target’s interesting because target is so much like a regular common noun.

Target is a target, right?

That’s right.

It’s impossible really to make it that kind of a possessive form.

The Aristocrat is a little different because it probably should follow a little more like Target and a little less like Penny’s.

Exactly.

See, I think I have a tendency to do that.

Whenever it lends itself at all, my ear will automatically just say aristocrats.

Where the boys, they won’t.

It’s like, no, we’re going to go to the Aristocrat for dinner.

Okay.

Interesting.

And Debbie, what do you do when you go to Toys R Us?

It would be, I’m going to Toys R Us.

I wouldn’t put the possessive on that.

So what we’re finding here, and this is what you can tell your sons.

First, mom is always right.

Thank you very much.

But second, you can tell your sons that there is a consistent rule here that if a name of a place tends to behave and feel like, it is about the native speaker’s intuition, tends to feel like a proper noun, like a last name, then it can follow the similar rules of taking the possession to mean everything that belongs to this particular proper noun.

Without having to name the thing.

So it’s not geographic.

It’s not generational.

You will find this consistent.

It’s something I’ve gotten used to.

It’s something they don’t particularly do.

They just don’t do it.

So we just both have our tendencies.

And I don’t think it’s age graded.

In Missouri, where I come from, people of all ages do this.

It happens here in California.

It happens in the South.

It happens in the Northeast.

It happens in the city.

It happens in the country.

There’s no particular geographic or racial or age or anything pattern to this.

It’s just some people do it and some people don’t.

There’s rules about why they do it.

Exactly, exactly.

But what I really like, and the takeaway for this is mom’s always right.

Absolutely.

It’s a little thing.

Just get over it and let’s go.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, yeah, mom’s always right.

Yeah.

Take care of your mother.

That’s right.

Tell them to go to Kmart’s and buy some Hive cream.

Yeah, exactly.

Go buy Kmart’s, get some earplugs if you don’t like it.

That’s exactly right.

Very good.

Well, thanks so much.

This is exactly what I needed.

Take care now.

Glad to help.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We should point out that you won’t hear newscasters do this unless they’re being ironic or making a joke.

You won’t hear people giving formal speeches do this.

Sure.

Because it belongs to a very casual, homey register of language that you tend not to use outside of very familiar circumstances.

Right.

As you said, it’s based on feel.

Yeah.

It’s very much an intuition about the kind of relationship also that you have with the place, not just with the word itself.

Do you have a language dispute in your home?

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