Pluralization of a French name

I know that in general French names are not pluralized. So to refer to several people with the same name--DuClos--it would be Les DuClos. But when one wishes to do it in English what is correct? The
DuClos seems to convey only one person like "The Donald" because the word the can't indicate a plural in English as it does in French. Of course, one could say "The DuClos Family", but that isn't quite comparable.
What does one write? Someone wrote The DuCloses which seems sort of like chalk screeching on a black board. Gotta be something better. Isn't there?

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on January 14, 2010 at 11:50pm

That's a rare case in English. I agree that DuCloses is awful, but other names ending in s are ok, like "The Harrises."

In written English I guess I'd write The Duclos'

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on January 15, 2010 at 5:00am

I think you have a couple of options:

- just write "The Duclos", and rely on the reader to intuit that in this case it is plural and the fnal -s is pronounced;
- write it as "The Duclos's", which looks horrible, but makes it clear that the final -s is to be pronounced.

The problem with writing "Ducloses" is that it implies that both s's are pronounced.