Table Naming Dilemma: Singular vs. Plural Names

Today I created a new database, but didn't know which table names I should use singular or plural ...

On my work we use plural names, when I studied it were singular names.

I was curious what I should use and after a little search I came across this post on Stack Overflow "Table Naming Dilemma: Singular vs. Plural Names [closed]".

The following reasons convinced me to use singular names (source):

• Reason 1 (Concept). You can think of bag containing apples like "AppleBag", it doesn't matter if contains 0, 1 or a million apples, it is always the same bag. Tables are just that, containers, the table name must describe what it contains, no how much data it contains.

• Reason 2. (Convenience). it is easier come out with singular names, than with plural ones. Objects can have irregular plurals or not plural at all, but will always have a singular one (with few exceptions like News).
• Customer
• Order
• User
• Status
• News

• Reason 3. (Aesthetic and Order). Specially in master-detail scenarios, this reads better, aligns better by name, and have more logical order (Master first, Detail second):

1. Order
2. OrderDetail

Compared to:

1. OrderDetails
2. Orders

• Reason 4 (Simplicity). Put all together, Table Names, Primary Keys, Relationships, Entity Classes... is better to be aware of only one name (singular) instead of two (singular class, plural table, singular field, singular-plural master-detail...)

Customer
Customer.CustomerID
CustomerAddress
public Class Customer {...}
SELECT FROM Customer WHERE CustomerID = 100

Once you know you dealing with "Customer", you can be sure you will use the same word for all your database interaction needs.

• Reason 5. (Globalization). The world is getting smaller, you may have a team of different nationalities, not everybody has English as native language. Would be easier for a non-native English language programmer to think of "Repository" than of "Repositories", or avoid them type "Statuses" instead of "Status". Having singular names can lead to less errors caused by typos, save time by avoid spending extra seconds to think "is it Child or Children?", hence improving productivity.

• Reason 6. (Why not?). It can even save you writing time, save you disk space, and even make your computer keyboard lasts more!

SELECT Customer.CustomerName FROM Customer WHERE Customer.CustomerID = 100
SELECT Customers.CustomerName FROM Customers WHERE Customers.CustomerID = 100
You have saved 3 letters, 3 bytes, 3 extra keyboard hits :)

• And finally, you can name those ones messing up with reserved names like:

User > LoginUser, AppUser, SystemUser, CMSUser,...
Or use the infamous squared brackets [User]