Q: I’m preparing handouts for my sister’s prayer group, but I’m unsure of whether to write “In Jesus’ Precious Name” or “In Jesus’s Precious Name.” I know you’re supposed to add an apostrophe plus “s” to make a name possessive. But isn’t that also how to make a contraction?
A: The form written with an apostrophe plus “s” (that is, “Jesus’s”) can represent either a contraction (short for “Jesus is” or “Jesus has”) or the possessive form of the name.
But in the expression you’re writing, it would clearly be the possessive. There’s no way a member of your sister’s prayer group would think otherwise.
The rule here is the same as it would be for any name—the apostrophe plus “s” at the end can signify either a contraction or a possessive.
For example, “James’s” can be a contraction of “James is” or “James has” (as in “James’s coming” or “James’s grown a beard”), or it can be the possessive form of the name (as in “She is James’s niece”).
But when the name is “Jesus,” there’s a twist with the possessive form. This is because there are two ways to form the possessive of an ancient classical or biblical name that ends in “s.”
The result is that your prayer could correctly be written with either “Jesus’ precious name” or “Jesus’s precious name.”
Why is this? The traditional custom has been to drop the final “s” when writing the possessives of ancient classical or biblical names that already end in “s.”
However, this old tradition is no longer universally followed. Today the final “s” is optional: “Euripides’ plays” or “Euripides’s plays,” “Moses’ staff” or “Moses’s staff,” “Jesus’ teachings” or “Jesus’s teachings.”
How do you decide? Let your pronunciation choose for you.
If you add an extra syllable when pronouncing one of these possessive names (MO‑zus‑uz), then add the final “s” (“Moses’s”). If you don’t pronounce that last “s” (and many people don’t, especially if the name ends in an EEZ sound, like Euripides), then don’t write it.
So our advice is that if you pronounce the possessive form of “Jesus” as JEE-zus, add the apostrophe alone; but if you pronounce it as JEE-zus-uz, then add ‘s.
This advice agrees with the recommendations of The Chicago Manual of Style(17th ed.), the guide widely used by both commercial and academic publishers.
And if you’d like to read more, we wrote a post in 2013 about how Jesus got his name.
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