Rosemary's baby

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In English, we often use an apostrophe followed by an s to express possession: instead of the baby of Rosemary, we say Rosemary’s baby. That means Rosemary has a baby.

We normally use this structure with people and animals, to indicate that they have something – the baby’s name, the girl’s name, the cat’s name. However, we say ‘the name of the girl who had the baby’ – because ‘the girl who had the baby’ is a long phrase.
Sometimes we find one ’s after another:
The baby’s mother’s name is Rosemary.    (→ Here the baby has a mother, and the mother has a name.)
We must be careful with the spelling. When a noun is plural and ends with an -s, we only write an apostrophe: my parents’ house. So I can talk about my friend’s house (if the house belongs to one friend), or my friends’ house (if it belongs to more than one friend).
When a noun is plural but doesn’t end with an –s, we write the apostrophe followed by an s: the children’s bedroom, women’s rights.

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