Charles' /Charles's (pronunciation) (2025)

Hello,

Recently I have been in a lot of confusion as to which one of these is correct:
1) I borrowed Charles' pencil.
2) I borrowed Charles's pencil.

I feel only sentence 2 is correct. Please let me know if my understanding is correct or not.

Besides this, I am also wondering how we would pronounce "Charles's". I think it would be pronounced as "Charlses", is that correct? Similarly, "Prince's" should be pronounced as "Princes" in this case which would be a little confusing as it would be similar to "Princess". Please let me which pronunciations would be correct.

Thank you.

There have been several threads on this topic.

Both 1 and 2 are used.

In RP, Charles is pronounced /tʃɑːlz/, and Charles's = /ˈtʃɑːlzɪz/

Prince's / Princes is pronounced /'prɪnsɪz/
Princess is /prɪnˈses/
so the two words are quite different.

Brioche said:

There have been several threads on this topic.

Both 1 and 2 are used.

In RP, Charles is pronounced /tʃɑːlz/, and Charles's = /ˈtʃɑːlzɪz/

Prince's / Princes is pronounced /'prɪnsɪz/
Princess is /prɪnˈses/
so the two words are quite different.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, it does clear the doubts about the pronunciations. And I made this thread because I couldn't find anything about it when I searched it. :/

I am still waiting for other opinions on sentence 1 and 2, maybe one of them might be more correct (if not only correct).

I'll leave it to the experts to tell you if one or the other is more correct.

But your questions made me realize something interesting about my own usage of the possessive form for words ending in the letter "s". I always write them with the terminal "s" followed by an apostrophe, but with out a second "s". However, in speaking, I always pronounce both of them. Inconsistent, I know, but that's how I do it.

If you read the sticky at the top of English Only, you'll see that panjandrum lists (click) the most frequently raised topics in this forum, and that this is one of them.

By following his link, you'll find a number of previous threads

Most advice is to write it the way you pronounce it.
Few would claim to pronounce three "s" sounds for the possessive of Jesus or Moses, so few would care to write Jesus's or Moses's.
It's all common sense really

For more, please see Loob's link and in particular:
Possessive - Charles' Or Charles's?
Possessive - proper names ending in Z or S

[Closure note deleted. DonnyB - moderator]

So you can do without 's and it still implies it.
Charles' car [cha:lz]
Charles's [cha:lziz].

One local book I consulted said:
James' [djeimziz]
It had this transcription and not [djeimz]

I would pronounce them 'Charlsiz' and 'Jamesiz' regardless of how they are spelt.

(And I would spell them both with the apostrophe.)

heypresto said:

I would pronounce them 'Charlsiz' and 'Jamesiz' regardless of how they are spelt.

Click to expand...

I might make exceptions. If there is a "James' Street", for example, I would almost certainly pronounce it as "James", without the "iz" ending, unless I knew locals pronounced it differently. However I pronounce both St James's Park (London) and St James' Park (Newcastle) as "Jamesiz". The pronunciation of the royal park in London is universal, I think, but there are people who pronounce Newcastle United's football ground as "James" and this, apparently, is how the club say it should be pronounced.

I almost always use just an apostrophe in writing, not adding a second letter "s".