When making the plural of a product name, do you follow standard rules?
Specifically, Blackberry. It is Blackberries, or Blackberrys.
In otherwords, is the product name sacrosanct?
I just looked at the web site and they seem pretty devoted to BlackBerry device; therefore plural BlackBerry devices. I think they were weaseling out on having to decide.
Lego block
Lego blocks
Blackberry device
Blackberry devices
I’m just sayin’.
Philster that is what the marketing people want for trademark purposes. We as normal speaking people do not need to keep the brand name as an adjective. Normal people say Legos and Blackberries. Nobody in normal conversation says Blackberry device they say Blackberry.
Where I work I think the plural would be phallic symbols.
“BlackBerry device” is to protect the trademark, just like the little kid with a runny nose and a boo-boo on his knee in the commercial who comes running into the house “Mama, I hurted me. Can I have a Band-Aid brand adhesive bandage?” – “Sure, and here, let me wipe your nose with this Kleenex brand facial tissue, too.”
All of which is of course television commercial-brand improbable dialogue.
Blackberry will eventually get used as a standalone noun, and later verb, much like Xerox-brand xerographic copying machines and the www.Google.com Internet search engine turned into standalone nouns and verbs.
As for the answer to the base question, “When ‘BlackBerry device’ gets contracted to ‘Blackberry’, how do you form its plural?” I have to confess I don’t know. Are there precedents of other product names ending in -y?
If placed in the position of Arbiter of Correctness and forced to decide, I’d say that ‘Blackberries’ would be correct, on the analogy that it will probably end up being used as a verb, and “He blackberried his client” looks cleaner than “He blackberry’d his client” (which looks like something Donne would have done).
My 13th edition Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t address product names ending in “y” but the rule for proper names ending in “y” is to add an “s”.
Toms, Dicks, and Harrys.
say six Hail Marys
two cold Januarys
However, “Blackberry” is not a proper name. Without a capital letter, it’s the name of a kind of plant. I would support using “Blackberries” as the plural.
And it’s “Proudfeet” damn it.
Indeed. And when you put one Walkman device with another Walkman device, you should find that you have two Walkmen.
Conversation does not demand that one distinguish whether they are saying “Blackberries” or “Blackberrys”. If committed to writing it out, one can opt to follow a standard form/style (’‘Blackberry devices’’) and still be ‘normal’, because proper form/style in writing requires us to drift from how we might normally talk.
Besides, who said I was normal?
I think that if you’re using the brand name as a noun, then I think it’s appropriate to treat it as you would a proper name and thus use Blackberrys as the plural.
That last one surprises me.
Calling them Lego blocks, instead of Legos when I was a kid would have gotten you some strange looks around the Lego bucket… and we’d have stolen all of the wheels you found in the bin.
Your guys would walk, and ours would have multi-wheel vehicles, which would be far cooler.
Blackberrys is what I’d put, if I wasn’t abbreviating it to BBs in the first place.
Read post 11.
Thanks.
~Philster
You can write however you want. I, however, will not not write awkward prose like “Blackberry devices” just to satisfy the marketing department at Blackberry. “Blackberry devices” is only the standard style if you are writing marketing blurb for Blackberry or one of its partners.
gazpacho, you opened the box with “we as normal speaking people”, and I merely indicated that I can be normal while still opting to use 'Blackberry devices" when writing. And, in the quote of mine, by you above, I said "If committed to writing it out, one can opt to follow a standard form/style".
There is no ‘normal’, and the OP wonders if the product name is ‘‘sacrosanct’’. Well, if you are writing it out and style/form matter, then it just might be.
Blackberrys.
Irregular plurals are used for the common meaning of the word, but not for names or nonliteral/stylistic uses of the word. Hence trees have leaves but the team is the Toronto Maple Leafs, people have lives but some paintings are still lifes.
Blackberri?
What do you call a situation where you have more than one point-and-click computer peripheral device? Let’s just say the jury is still out.
As someone whose family name ends in a “y” I vote for “Blackberrys.”