common nouns.  How far proper names are to be made exceptions, because they are proper names, is an other question.  It is certain that some of them are not to be excepted:  as, for instance, Alleghany, the Alleghanies; Sicily, the Two Sicilies; Ptolemy, the Ptolemies; Jehu, the Jehues.  So the names of tribes; as, The Missouries, the Otoes, the Winnebagoes.  Likewise, the houries and the harpies; which words, though not strictly proper names, are often written with a capital as such.  Like these are rabbies, cadies, mufties, sophies, from which some writers omit the e.  Johnson, Walker, and others, write gipsy and gipsies; Webster, now writes Gipsey and Gipseys; Worcester prefers Gypsy, and probably Gypsies:  Webster once wrote the plural gypsies; (see his Essays, p. 333;) and Johnson cites the following line:—­

   “I, near yon stile, three sallow gypsies met.”—­Gay.

OBS. 13.—­Proper names in o are commonly made plural by s only.  Yet there seems to be the same reason for inserting the e in these, as in other nouns of the same ending; namely, to prevent the o from acquiring a short sound.  “I apprehend,” says Churchill, “it has been from an erroneous notion of proper names being unchangeable, that some, feeling the necessity of obviating this mispronunciation, have put an apostrophe between the o and the s in the plural, in stead of an e; writing Cato’s, Nero’s; and on a similar principle, Ajax’s, Venus’s; thus using the possessive case singular for the nominative or objective plural.  Harris says very properly, ’We have our Marks and our Antonies:  Hermes, B. 2, Ch. 4; for which those would have given us Mark’s and Antony’s.”—­New Gram., p. 206.  Whatever may have been the motive for it, such a use of the apostrophe is a gross impropriety.  “In this quotation, [’From the Socrates’s, the Plato’s, and the Confucius’s of the age,’] the proper names should have been pluralized like common nouns; thus, From the Socrateses, the Platoes, and the Confuciuses of the age.”—­Lennie’s Gram., p. 126; Bullions’s, 142.

OBS. 14.—­The following are some examples of the plurals of proper names, which I submit to the judgement of the reader, in connexion with the foregoing observations:  “The Romans had their plurals Marci and Antonii, as we in later days have our Marks and our Anthonies.”—­Harris’s Hermes, p. 40.  “There seems to be more reason for such plurals, as the Ptolemies, Scipios, Catos:  or, to instance in more modern names, the Howards, Pelhams, and Montagues.”—­Ib., 40.  “Near the family seat of the Montgomeries of Coil’s-field.”—­Burns’s Poems, Note, p. 7.  “Tryphon, a surname