The most petty of niggles

[naath]

What is it with English speakers adding 's' in inappropriate places?

TESCO is neither plural (unless you are talking about the 4 stores you had to visit to get bog roll) nor possessive, although Sainbury's is.

Lego is a mass noun, and has no plural. You have lots of lego, or many lego bricks. The official site even gets quite cross about 'Legos'

There is a road I used to live near 'Northfield Avenue' even some satnavs make it 'Northfields' which it IS NOT. (I even had to check the sign; my brother's satnav managed to gass light me)

ARGH the irritation. What is it that drives people to this?

Comments

[jack]

I feel like there's been some drift towards thinking of the name as the organisation and the possessive as the building, like "Tesco have some good ready meals so I might go down to Tesco's later".

I guess like, maybe English has too few modifiers so people keep making up new ones, like using ' to mark any added 's'...

And I sort of like that distinction even though I admit it's confusing and inconsistent when they're applied to shops with names that don't work like that