I recently had a discussion with a colleague about the naming of tables and whether or not a plural table name makes sense. The argument for pluralizing had two interesting, competing viewpoints for which I’d like to discuss and give my reasoning why I prefer the singular form.

“A sock drawer contains socks. You wouldn’t label your sock drawer ‘sock’.”

“It’s not a ‘drawer of socks’, it is a sock drawer.”

Two competing arguments for the plurality of naming conventions.

Firstly, I’d like to point out that “socks” is inherently plural as they come in a pair; I would argue that this alone negates the entire conversation. However, I still think it’s a common struggle when naming tables and objects.

The question is: Do you look at a table from a holistic point of view, the collection as a whole, or do you look at it from the view of the records within the table, which make up the collection?

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