{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Here in Britain we have a chain of supermarkets known as Tesco. However some people refer to these stores as Tescos, indicating...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/708108263271645184/", "html": "
holycoffeewhispers asked:
Here in Britain we have a chain of supermarkets known as Tesco. However some people refer to these stores as Tescos, indicating a plural, or as Tesco's which denotes ownership of the stores by \"Tesco\", whoever that is. I would like your opinion on which is correct.
I tend to say \u201cTesco\u201d as that is the word I\u2019m more used to, and it\u2019s the one that will fit into whatever context I\u2019m using it in.
Fantastic to hear that you have the correct answer. Although if it was possessive Tesco\u2019s I would be fascinated to know who Tesco is.
If it\u2019s possessive Tesco\u2019s, they own some amount of Tesco\u2019s, and they own it through some entity called Tesco. That\u2019s the case with many companies in that situation \u2013 Google owns Alphabet, Amazon owns LogisticsLogic, so forth. But Google and Amazon don\u2019t just have \u201cGoogle\u201d and \u201cAmazon,\u201d they have \u201cGoogle inc\u201d and \u201cAmazon inc.\u201d The corporate structure is part of the legal identity, like your name, although people would usually also use another name for day-to-day use (if you want to refer to your company, say, on legal forms or whatever, you\u2019ll use inc or something like it).
The situation with Google and Amazon, while somewhat more complex than the scenario described by the OP, is not actually that convoluted. In the simplest case, say you want to create a website where you can order a product, then you\u2019ll make a new company, Inc.., and buy the domain name \u201cwww.amazon.com\u201d so that it will \u201cbelong\u201d to Inc..\u2019s brand (and of course, that\u2019s what you\u2019ll link people to \u2013 I mean, you aren\u2019t going to link people to Inc..\u2019s site, because that\u2019d be bad). Inc..\u2019s corporate parent is Amazon, Inc. At this point, you aren\u2019t actually \u201cAmazon,\u201d you\u2019re just \u201cInc..\u201d \u2013 but you\u2019re Amazon, Inc., in the sense of \u201cthe group of entities legally distinct from one another and also legally distinct from your previous incarnation,\u201d whereas the group of people who do \u201cthe thing\u201d for you (as Amazon) are the \u201cInc..\u201d corporation.
It\u2019s kind of like your name \u2013 no one has to use your name unless they want to refer to you, and when they do so they have to say \u201cJames Inc.\u201d., not just \u201cJames.\u201d But they\u2019d be stupid to do that for legal or organizational reasons; saying \u201cJames\u201d on paperwork would be confusing or misleading or something.
And as for the \u201cwho is Tesco\u201d? Here\u2019s a story. There was once a company called \u201cJameson\u2019s Limited,\u201d owned by the Jameson family. And one day the company changed its name to \u201cJameson Limited & Partners,\u201d because the business had grown and now they had more than one partner (there were several Jamesons in the ownership group).
Later, some other companies wanted to buy Jameson Ltd. & Partners, so they created another company with the same name. But people weren\u2019t confused because they referred to this other company as \u201cJameson Ltd.\u201d and to the other Jameson Ltd. (which wasn\u2019t a partnership at all, now) as \u201cJameson & Partners.\u201d
In some cases, companies will want to \u201cbrand\u201d themselves in a particular way. The Coca-Cola company, for instance, will probably not want to have any other beverage company start advertising Coca-Cola. So the Coca-Cola company will create a subsidiary, Coca-Cola (UK) Ltd., which owns the \u201cCoca-Cola\u201d brand name and also owns the \u201cCoca-Cola\u201d trade name. The Coca-Cola company will then own the company Coca-Cola (UK) Ltd. (There can be more than one Coca-Cola company, I guess.)
The parent company in this case will be Coca-Cola Ltd., which is different from Coca-Cola Inc. (that one just owns \u201cCoca-Cola\u201d the brand) because the parent company will not own the company Coca-Cola (UK) Ltd., which would be confusing. (I think it\u2019s a bit clearer than in the case of Google & Co. and Inc.. where you don\u2019t actually own or have any right to any of the individual companies.)
(I haven\u2019t used \u201cinc.\u201d., by the way. My habit is to refer to the parent company as that one and the subsidiary as \u201cthe one that owns this,\u201d rather than referring to the subsidiary with anything other than the name of its parent company.)
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That was more in depth than I was expecting. Here is a picture of Tesco (or Tescos or Tesco\u2019s) to give you a flavour of what it is like to shop here.
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In general, when I think of it in those terms, I would say \u201cthe one that\u2019s not the one that owns that\u201d (where that \u201cthat\u201d refers to the store in the picture, which is one of the ones that\u2019s owned by Tesco), but I would also say \u201cthe one that doesn\u2019t own the one that owns this\u201d (I\u2019m guessing the store has many owners because it\u2019s actually quite big), and I can\u2019t help but wonder whether there are possible situations where there\u2019s no such thing.
I guess technically speaking, all of the companies listed above are distinct companies as opposed to part of the same company, and thus the \u201cownership\u201d of, e.g. Google is not in question here. But still I guess when people talk about the same person in different ways they are usually saying \u201cwe\u2019re talking about the same entity rather than about the same person.\u201d E.g. if Google and Microsoft were to split up tomorrow, and someone said \u201cJames is still Google\u2019s CEO,\u201d I would still think they meant \u201cJames is still the head of Google (and its other subsidiary companies)\u201d rather than \u201cJames is the same as that other James\u201d (but I imagine they would probably still say \u201cI still do the thing\u201d).
![](\"/media/56dc2fa0d4bcbd9f1b3ee281786fb29def982bc8_68ee111dad99.jpg\")