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which of these two phrases is correct?

A - The man, WHOM from now on we will refer to as Jim, approaches the table and stands next to the lady.

B - The man, WHO from now on we will refer to as Jim, approaches the table and stands next to the lady.

None of my native English speaker friends do not agree on which one is correct.

Thanks.

black-clover
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  • Obviously you can justify 'The man whom we know ...' etc, as traditionally taking the objective case. But I'd say that 95%+ of proficient Anglophones will use 'The man, who from now on we will refer to as Jim, ...'. It depends on how you define 'correct' here, prescriptively (what a lot of old-fashioned books on grammar say is 'correct') or descriptively (what almost everyone does). So (a) not worth arguing about, but (b) use 'who' like almost everybody else in the US and the UK does. – Edwin Ashworth May 03 '20 at 18:39
  • Thanks for the prompt, complete and articulate answer. Just what I needed. – black-clover May 03 '20 at 20:22
  • In this sentence, "whom" is the object of the preposition "to". – Andreas Blass May 04 '20 at 04:16
  • @Andrew Blass But where the preposition is stranded, it is far more common to switch 'whom' to 'who'. G Pullum, in an article mentioned at the duplicate, says 'whom ... right after a preposition, and that's the one place whom is still common. ' And 'It isn't true that, as the grammar pontificators often imply, that the rules are fixed and perfectly simple and everyone ought to know them and it's only laziness if you don't. ' – Edwin Ashworth May 04 '20 at 11:41

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