A friend of mine has just been blessed with a baby grandson. The parents are naming the baby Louis (pronouncing it Loo-ee).
I am planning to get them a personalised toy box as a present as I thought it would be something that would be used for years, but when it comes to the personalisation should it be “Louis’ toy box” or “Louis’s toy box”.
I have looked online, but can’t find a definitive answer, as some suggest it
depends if the name is pronounced Loo-ee or Lew-iss.
Can anybodies help me.
What a lovely gesture
For my two penny worth I’m going to say Louis toy box but I’ll see what others say
I’m not really sure either, to be honest. I would just have the name Louis on it, and he can use the box for any purpose in years to come.
Personally I think it should be Louis’ Toy Box but that is just my opinion. The difficulty is that I have seen it argued that if the final s is not a plural (like Mothers’ Day ie it is for many Mothers) then it should be Louis’s but I prefer the s’
Irrespective of the pronounciation - if a name ends with an ‘s’ the correct possessive
would be just the apostrophy = Louis’
I agree with Bruce.
That’s a good idea PK, but the box I was looking at has “Toy Box” printed on it, (as well as a giraffe, zeb and lion) on it, and then they print the name on it.
Thanks all, Louis’ toy box it shall be. If I got it wrong it might be the type of thing that would drive the parents mad, then again it might not.
Louis on its own is a good idea as you say it can then be used for other things as he gets older
IMO, the possessive of Louis is Louis’s, since Louis’ would still be pronounced loo-ee.
It’s a “dimella”, as Jade Goody once said.
Oh I didn’t know it had “toy box” on it already…for some reason I imagined you had a plain wooden box that you were going to decorate yourself 
This one.
Hmm it’s a tricky one . I would have said Louis’
I found this talking about the name Louis
Sadly I am completely lacking in artistic skills, if I attempted that it would look like…well a messy mucky muddle.
I’m afraid that Americans are not very good at spelling, etc. Sadly, due to the ongoing influence of Americanisms, along with poor teaching, Britain is going the same way.
Louis is the French form of the Old Frankish given name Chlodowig but, in French, the solution is worse:
Coffre à jouets de Louis
