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One of the features of a technology i'm working with (entity framework) is that it can automatically pluralise database table names. It usually does this with a surprising degree of accuracy - not just adding an 'S' i.e. 'HelperHistory' becomes 'HelperHistories', 'Person' becomes 'People'.

However I noticed that 'EmailSentTo' became 'EmailSentToes' and this seems odd. I can't see a reference to 'Toes' being the plural of 'To' from searching around.

Is this some regional or arcane rule that changes it? And what is the plural of 'To' - for example, in the sentence "Here is the email, John is third in the list of [toes?]"

Something is afoot.

David
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  • Te/tych/tym.... – Spencer Feb 20 '17 at 14:31
  • Seriously, change "SentTo" to "Recipient" and the problem goes away. – Spencer Feb 20 '17 at 14:37
  • Its not my database so not an option :) and I wouldn't call it a problem, it just made me curious – David Feb 20 '17 at 14:39
  • Related: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/28671/dos-and-donts-or-dos-and-donts – herisson Feb 20 '17 at 15:20
  • 'Emails Sent To' is the 'proper' pluralization. 'to' is not a noun and does not have a plural). Just because there's an automatic method doesn't mean it's right. – Mitch Feb 20 '17 at 15:29
  • This is a question about the inner workings of the entity framework you're using. You need a framework expert, not an English expert. – MetaEd Feb 20 '17 at 20:53
  • I disagree. I was not asking how to fix it, or even why entity thought that was correct, but I did ask if it was correct English usage (and got the answer - thanks!) with a bit of flavour about why I was asking - substitute "I saw this in a book" for the entity framework story and you'd have the same question. – David Feb 21 '17 at 10:09
  • There's a way to stop mongo from doing that: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22391706/is-there-a-way-to-prevent-mongodb-adding-plural-form-to-collection-names – jimm101 Feb 24 '17 at 20:58

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I think there is no plural, because it isn't a noun, and that Entity Framework is just trying to guess the correct plural form in case it's a noun it doesn't recognize. Assuming 'EmailSentToes' contains the persons the email was sent to, I would just leave it as 'EmailSentTo', because the noun that Entity Framework expects to find (person, as in 'EmailSentToPerson') isn't there.

bklaric
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The automatic algorithm gave the wrong answer.

Usually, if you want put a lexical entity or phrase into the context of the words themselves, you put it in quotes:

Fred received several "attaboy"s for closing a lucrative deal. He would have preferred a bonus, however.

In your case, it would probably have been best to leave the plural of "EmailSentTo" as itself, similar to the way the plural of deer is deer.

Spencer
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