As a slight tangent to this thread, is there any reason why Jesus and other classical names are treated differently than other singular nouns ending in s? I’ve always wondered why they got this special treatment.
n general, the possessive is not pronounced as a separate syllable. It’s “Achilles’ heel”, little different from ordering your pet wolfhound Achilles “Achilles, heel!” Shakespeare’s epitaph begins, “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear / to dig the dust encloas’d here…” Euripides’ plays, Pericles’ archonhood, Dionysius’ Bacchanalia… almost all such usages share the tendency, and the rule is therefore made consistent for all “classical” names ending in -s.
“For Jesus’ sake” is a special case, since “sake” begins with /s/ and English tends to simplify /szs/ to /s s/ even across word boundaries. I think the question, though, was about how this difference arose: why “Achilles’ heel” but “Thomas’s heel” ? Why did a separate rule come into play for Classical names in the first place?
[Dplcate post – Mod, please delete