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Table Naming Dilemma: Singular vs. Plural Names [closed]

Academia has it that table names should be the singular of the entity that they store attributes of.

I dislike any T-SQL that requires square brackets around names, but I have renamed a Users table to the singular, forever sentencing those using the table to sometimes have to use brackets.

My gut feel is that it is more correct to stay with the singular, but my gut feel is also that brackets indicate undesirables like column names with spaces in them etc.

Should I stay, or should I go?

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Answer

Others have given pretty good answers as far as “standards” go, but I just wanted to add this… Is it possible that “User” (or “Users”) is not actually a full description of the data held in the table? Not that you should get too crazy with table names and specificity, but perhaps something like “Widget_Users” (where “Widget” is the name of your application or website) would be more appropriate.

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