this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2026
53 points (90.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

50433 readers
679 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] communism@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 days ago

"Their names are both Trevor" would sound the most unambiguous to me.

[–] Jenthura@lemmy.zip 54 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I would just say "They're both named Trevor."

[–] boletus@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What if there's more than two Trevors?

They're all named Trevor.

[–] Leviathan@fedinsfw.app 2 points 3 days ago

Both of their names is Trevor?

[–] Master@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

The trevors are named trevor.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 47 points 4 days ago

Trevor're their names.

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 3 days ago

This is the one grammatically acceptable time to use Thar

[–] Another_username@lemmy.world 27 points 4 days ago

They’re named Trevor.

[–] nous@programming.dev 26 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Both don't sound right as they are ambiguous. "Their name is Trevor," sounds like it is talking about a single person. "Their names are Trevor" feels incomplete. "They are both named Trevor" or "Their names are Trevor and Trevor" solves that ambiguity.

Their names is Trevor

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 20 points 3 days ago

"They're both named Trevor."

[–] Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] spongebue@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)
load more comments (2 replies)

“Their names are Trevor.”

[–] 5wim@infosec.pub 5 points 3 days ago

Their names are Roberts Paulsons

[–] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Both their names are Trevor

[–] bhamlin@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

These are our Trevors.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

When would you use both their vs both of their in this scenario? Your's makes sense but I would have put an of, and I'm wondering if it's just a waste of letters.

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

Both are valid. One might be more likely to feel more natural to say depending on where that person is from or how they were taught, that's it.

[–] BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago (2 children)

As somebody who worked in a place with 5 Dougs, I would say their names are Doug. Beyond that, they get descriptors. Angry Doug, Cool Doug, Vac-Former Doug, Smiley Doug, and Doug 2.

[–] Gumus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

Doug

DougDoug

DougDougDoug

DougDougDougDoug

Douglas

[–] determinist@kbin.earth 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Doug 2 was technically Doug 5. But we didn't have a descriptor for him. Well, we could have called him "Blood Pressure Doug" but that's kind of insensitive. And he wasn't around long enough to figure out a better one.

[–] determinist@kbin.earth 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Did the blood pressure get him then? sad sad end for Doug (2 | 5)

[–] BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

No! He just hated the job. Thank you for that, I got a good laugh. He came from a very structured place, where he had a very specific job. We were much smaller, and the scope of our positions covered a lot more, and our workflow was not what he was accustomed to.

[–] zerofk@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago

My interpretation: “their name is Trevor” is grammatically correct, but semantically means their collective name is Trevor, not that they’re both called Trevor.

“Their names are Trevor” is incomplete because the subject implies a plural while the object is singular. This could work if you were to list multiple names: “their names are Trevor and Trevor.”

[–] andresil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

You could use some Irish English, then you could be saying "Themmuns are called Trevor" that way there's zero ambiguity

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

“Their names are Trevor and Also-Trevor”.

[–] Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

I present: THE TREVORS

[–] scallisto@retrofed.com 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If you are referring to only one of the two, it is "their name is Trevor". If you are introducing both of them at once (possible, but less likely), you would say "(both of) their names are Trevor". Sometimes people also pluralise the name, e.g. "I'm friends with five Alices" or "I know two Bobs at work"

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

The sentence that comes to mind is “both of their names are Trevor.”

For your question, this conveniently reduces to “their names are Trevor.”

So there’s your answer.

[–] Epp@lemmus.org 4 points 4 days ago

If the pair together have a name, the pair's name "is Trevor" but if they're each individually named Trevor, their names "are Trevor."

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Both correct, it depends whether you are saying,1 "They both have names and their names are Trevor" or "They both have the same name and that name is Trevor".

So the real question is are you talking about their shared name or both of their names separately?

[–] Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

"These are the trevors"

"These are Trevors one and two"

I used to know 3 guys named Cody. Eventually their names evolved into Co-one, Co-two, and Co-three any time we were referring to them outside of individual.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

The name has no plural here because it is the same: Their name is Trevor.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

Add one vote for "are".

[–] Spes@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

And Trevor is his name-o

[–] FritzApollo@piefed.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"A Trevor trove of flavour lies within".

"Who's Trevor?".

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

As others have said, neither is good English.

That being said, you're referring to two people, so are is the less incorrect version in that specific example. I'm way too long out of grammar classes to remember the right terminology for the underlying "rule", but it comes down to what the target is.

They are Trevor is a more compact version of they are both Trevor, which is again the short version of they are both named Trevor.

So, it comes down to sticking as close to that as possible. Their names are Trevor, because there's a single name, but plural people. Both people possess the name Trevor. Trevor is their name.

That's usually the way to figure out the least wrong/closest correct way to say something. You shift the wording until you get something that scans right to your brain, and most of the time you're as close as you'll get with conjugation of "to be"

And it's weird as fuck that "to be" is so transformed. Is, am, was, were, are, been, being, and even weird shit like "be going to" and "going to be". Like, wtf English? Why you gotta bring extra words to the party like that? You really need a second verb to conjugate a verb?

There's some weird etymology shit going on there somewhere between old English and it's roots. Hell, the fact that "to be" is even necessary is a little weird. Like "ser" in Spanish. It means the same thing, but lacks the weirdness of to as a butt buddy. Mind you, that shit conjugates weird too! Yo soy muy mindfucked by Spanish too, and I bet tu eres mindfucked tambien. Like, really, go look up the conjugation of ser. It isn't as wonky as to be, but it's getting there, especially in the imperfect tenses.

I don't even speak Spanish worth a damn, much less any other languages, but I bet every language has some fuckery like that in it. I'm just really gobsmacked at the verbal gymnastics of the two I'm familiar with. But the English version of the underlying idea is just an extra layer of tomfoolery.

load more comments
view more: next ›