• zerofk@lemmy.zip
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    7 days ago

    My interpretation: “their name is Trevor” is grammatically correct, but semantically means their collective name is Trevor, not that they’re both called Trevor.

    “Their names are Trevor” is incomplete because the subject implies a plural while the object is singular. This could work if you were to list multiple names: “their names are Trevor and Trevor.”

  • nous@programming.dev
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    8 days ago

    Both don’t sound right as they are ambiguous. “Their name is Trevor,” sounds like it is talking about a single person. “Their names are Trevor” feels incomplete. “They are both named Trevor” or Or “Their names are Trevor and Trevor” solves that ambiguity.

  • sbird@retrofed.com
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    8 days ago

    If you are referring to only one of the two, it is “their name is Trevor”. If you are introducing both of them at once (possible, but less likely), you would say “(both of) their names are Trevor”. Sometimes people also pluralise the name, e.g. “I’m friends with five Alices” or “I know two Bobs at work”

  • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    As somebody who worked in a place with 5 Dougs, I would say their names are Doug. Beyond that, they get descriptors. Angry Doug, Cool Doug, Vac-Former Doug, Smiley Doug, and Doug 2.

      • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Doug 2 was technically Doug 5. But we didn’t have a descriptor for him. Well, we could have called him “Blood Pressure Doug” but that’s kind of insensitive. And he wasn’t around long enough to figure out a better one.

          • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            No! He just hated the job. Thank you for that, I got a good laugh. He came from a very structured place, where he had a very specific job. We were much smaller, and the scope of our positions covered a lot more, and our workflow was not what he was accustomed to.

  • Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    “These are the trevors”

    “These are Trevors one and two”

    I used to know 3 guys named Cody. Eventually their names evolved into Co-one, Co-two, and Co-three any time we were referring to them outside of individual.