Ia anyone seriously suggesting that the energency services might not find "King's Road" when they would find "Kings Road"? If that's true, then presumably if the operator types "kings road" you'd be stuffed as well. Get a grip. Or a better search tool.

O

People actually care about this? Actual, living, breathing members of society? Not fictitious people made up by the Daily Fail? This is what is wrong with this country.

I never thought of Acocks being possive... I thought it was the full name, the same as anybody with the surname Stevens or Jones.

Mountain out of Molehill, anyone?

I've lived adjacent to them for more than forty years, and Kings Norton and Kings Heath have alway s been spelt without an apostrophe. The thought that Acocks Green (and would that be Acock's or Acocks', eh?) or Kitts Green might need an apostrophe has never even occurred to me, and I do grammatical pedantry with the worst of them. Druids Heath, Highters Heath...

Here's a photograph of Kings Heath station in 1957; fifty years ago the apostrophe was gone.

http://www.photobydjnorton.com/RailwayPictures/KingsHeathBoxClr.jpg

And more fun, are we now to worry about introducing a space into Kingstanding?

I note that they are saying that since the King no longer owns the Heath the name should change. Well according to a quick search, Birmingham either means the home on the hill by the heath or the home of the sons of Breme. Perhaps they would like to prove that either of these meanings are still valid or alternatively come up with a new name for their metropolis ( I could suggest a few).

Do they really think that if the conditions which gave the original meaning change then the name is not valid? Does that mean that only sons of Jack can have the surname of Jackson? Would they perhaps like to take on names such as Kermit, Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggie because they certainly are portraying themselves as Muppets.

FTA: However, there is a (sort of) plausible reason for the move. As the Times notes, Oz in 2001 expunged apostrophes from place names "for the sake of consistency in the databases used by the emergency services". Mullaney rested his case with: “It would be tragic if the ambulance couldn’t find your street if you forgot to use the possessive apostrophe.”

Type in King's Heath in google; Type in Kings' Heath in google: it finds Kings Heath in (of all places Birmingham)! The argument is therefore fallacious and even silly.

"tense grammatical debate"......? In Birmingham.......?!

Surely, a prerequisitie of being able to conduct a tense grammatical debate would be possessing the power to speak coherently in the first place....

Speaking of examples, perhaps Mr. Richards should lead by one. His ancestors dropped the possessive apostrophe from his name (possibly to facilitate punch cards with no apostrophe for the census?) Of course, the first of his dynasty might have been "John Richard Richard Jones" and shortened it to the plural "John Richards" to save time, but that seems less likely than "John Richard's son." In these days of Unicode databases, he can enjoy much more freedom with his name. Maybe he could band together with the parents of "4real."

That said, this all seems pretty silly, and completely suitable for Friday afternoon Reg content.

'As the Times notes, Oz in 2001 expunged apostrophes from place names "for the sake of consistency in the databases used by the emergency services". Mullaney rested his case with: “It would be tragic if the ambulance couldn’t find your street if you forgot to use the possessive apostrophe.” ®'

...or not find it if you do use the possessive apostrophe. Any half-way decent navigation software will work with and without the apostrophe. The real world just isn't that consistent. Even Transport for London, A-Z and the Ordnance Survey can't agree on the use of possessives in things like station names.

Now I understand why these massive rises in Council Tax are necessary! All is clear at last.

Can we now expect next year's Council Tax increase to be even bigger to give our overlords the wherewithal to tackle those rogue colons and semicolons?

Well, I can kind of see their point (not full stop! :-D): the possessive part of the original name is now rather questionable, and for the sake of consistency in databases and whatnots it probably makes sense to wave them bye bye in *this instance*. I mean it's not as if it's the first time ever place names have evolved from an original meaning to something similar but not quite the same...?!

And note that they're not proposing to remove them from EVERYTHING the council does, just place names. Pedants get a life.

Wow how pedantic am I posting a comment on such a trivial item??

"apple's for £1" saw that this morning....ARRRRRRRRRGH

... by making the singular possessive apostrophe redundant, the possessors are now plural ("Kings" and "Acocks")?

In other words, the three examples should now in fact be Kings' Heath, Kings' Norton and Acocks' Green - which for the apostrophically challenged, could be even worse.

are these teachers making the two back beast like bunnies on viagra?

Shirley, that should be their pupils. And then you could have had the play on words with seeing and the signs.

Yes, I am a little annoyed my big endian, little endian, and rot13 comments have been censored by the Register, for dross on the apostrophe.

We don't even have an apostrophe on a standard keyboard, we just have the bastardised single quote.

Watch this post get censored :) &#apos; yes include some small nugget of tech humour and off to the great big /dev/null in the sky with you.

This is actually historically correct. You won't see any apostrophes in any ancient or medieval Germanic languages, or in Middle English. Why would you put an apostrophe between a noun and its case ending?

I believe the apostrophe was added by folk-etymologists in the 16th century.

Wankers'

I'm Kinda in agreement, and I never thought I would be. I think that as it is now a Name and not a description it is correct.

If it were on the map as 'Norton' and owned by the King and known as 'King's Norton' then fine it is correct until it becomes 'Kings Norton' on the map, then its just a name, and is no longer a description of possession.

Emergency services fooled by apostrophes? That's someone making up scary stories to what amounts to a meaningless and arbitrary decision. Matching on this kind of thing is far, far looser than would be lost by the difference between "King's Heath" and "Kings Heath". It would probably stil find the same place given "Kinsey Heap".

999 Operator: "Does your street belong to, figuratively, the King?"

Dying person: "I've been shitting stabbed, just send an ambulance to S74 88ED!"

Thin end of the wedge of ignorance.

More dumbing down, as those incapable of getting it right at school, gain employment in positions of power. What image does it give of us here in the UK to the rest of the world ?

Barons Court?

Anyway, who cares about Acock. Names are just identification tags in

daily life. Understanding the story of a name is nice for historians,

but I never knew the story of the name of Acocks Green for the 30

years I lived close by, and nor do I really care.

Not half so tragic as the software programmers not knowing how to parse the input and escape any rogue apostrophes *before* submitting a query.

This is hardly new, I lived in sunny Brum back in the 1990's and "Browns Green" was unapostrophed near my old digs. That sign itself was a fine bit of cast iron that I guess was pretty old even then. Possessive apostrophes surely only work in the case of possession, as the council point out this is redundant in the current case with much of Brum's place names. We should demand all place names ending with an old English possesive term to have an apostrophe put back, Bols'ton, Brixs'ton, Brents'ford, Greens'ford. Or we could just accept that the language changes and stop being pedantic jerks.

@Paul Murphy

King's <--- Belonging to one King, or indeed a contraction of "King is", as in "the King's here". Which is meant can generally be deduced from the context.

Kings' <--- Belonging to more than one King