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Is the following phrase grammatical?

I seem to recall three people, none of who's names I can remember.

Janus Bahs Jacquet
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Apollo
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    ...three people, whose names I can't remember! –  Jan 26 '15 at 21:37
  • Alternately (and awkwardly) "...three people, none of the names of whom I can remember." – calvin Jan 26 '15 at 22:03
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    That's a lot of syntax to pied pipe just to confess ignorance. – John Lawler Jan 26 '15 at 23:59
  • @JohnLawler what are you saying? – Apollo Jan 27 '15 at 00:02
  • I'm saying that I seem to recall three people. I can't recall any names does the job without any syntactic heavy lifting, on your part or -- more importantly -- on the part of your addressee. – John Lawler Jan 27 '15 at 00:06
  • @JohnLawler How is this syntax complicated? – Apollo Jan 27 '15 at 00:08
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    Related to and possible duplicate of one or another of http://english.stackexchange.com/q/64320 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/9557 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/21078 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/4786 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/175230 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/126994 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/8296 — in no particular order except at first. – tchrist Jan 27 '15 at 00:23
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    As asked, your question is Off-Topic Proofreading. Please see our Help Center for how to write a good question. – tchrist Jan 27 '15 at 00:25

1 Answers1

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No. It is "whose".

"Who's" is the contracted form of "who is", which doesn't make sense in this context and is also ungrammatical..

"Whose" is the possessive form of "who". I'll take the chance and guess that was meant.

AverageGatsby
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    Please do not answer trivial General Reference questions without any research shown. – tchrist Jan 26 '15 at 23:20
  • @tchrist give it a rest – Apollo Jan 27 '15 at 00:02
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    However, note that this is only true in writing. In speech who's and whose are pronounced identically, and distinguished, if at all, only by syntax, like bear (v), bear (n), and bare. And -- surprise! nobody ever gets confused in speech. How come they get confused in writing? Because it's not a distinction we're used to making -- like apostrophe's it's inaudible -- and it requires an abstract (and incorrect) analysis of how language works in order to master. This is not a trivial General Reference question. – John Lawler Jan 27 '15 at 00:04
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    @JohnLawler - I can hear the apostrophes...in the screams of my grade school English teacher. – Mitch Jan 27 '15 at 00:36