Help with where to put apostrophe!

[user1471427667]

Hi, could anyone clever, who paid more attention than me in English lessons help with this please.
I want to send a gift to a family whose surname is Morell and have it engraved starting with the words “Christmas at the” Which of these do I end with….?

1. Christmas at the Morells
2. Christmas at the Morell’s
3. Christmas at the Morells’ Ironically, the one person in real life that I know would know is a member of this family which is why I want to get it right! Thanks in advance

No help I know, but I want to know what the gift is!

Absolutely not 2!

No. It would have to be

Christmas at the Joneses'

There is more than one Jones so you have to make it a plural before you add the apostrophe.

If there was only one Jones it would be Christmas at Tom Jones's (though many people would omit the final s and just say Jones').

Apologies, you’re quite right. I forgot to pluralise the surname. I’ll ask MNHQ to delete my previous post as this issue doesn’t need further confusion!

It's possessive, with reference to 'the house of', which it is a contraction of.

Does 'Christmas at Freds' look right to you? Or would it be 'Christmas at Fred's'?

I think people are mixing it up with 'Christmas with the Morells', which is simply Morell plural. But 'at the Morells' introduces a reference to their house, and that's why it needs to be in the possessive.

I liked Noël chez Morrell

2 makes my eyes bleed

I suspect you love a menu with pizza's and chip's on it?

I want to hand out tracts saying, "An apostrophe NEVER makes more of something!"

I want to carry a marker pen and black out superfluous apostrophes.

Me too. I'd love to say 'It's really not that hard!!' to people, but actually, it is quite hard sometimes. I had to think 3 times about OP's query.

But menu's are my least favourite of all.

1 suggests you're celebrating the festive season with a bunch of mushrooms
2 would be correct if you removed the "the" and were spending Christmas with one person called Morell
3 states that you are spending Christmas with multiple humans called Morell (it is both plural and possessive) - which is correct

Absent or misused apostrophes are my pet hate too 😕

Apostrophe at the end.

PLEASE get this right.

I cannot bear another season of shite Cricut crafts on FB marketplace with the apostrophe in the wrong place.

3

Definitely Morells' but so shit that the sellers of this gift provide the phrase and don't know how to do it. For what it's worth possessive apostrophes are contractions of the original old english - 'John his house'. Though they would have said Mr Morrell his house! Hth.

Morells'

It's a plural possessive as the family is plural and they own the home,