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Do you know what his name is?

Do you know what is his name?

I saw this in grammar text book. The first is the correct one because "Subject + Verb". The second is wrong.

We do usually say "What is your name?", "What is his name?", why the sentence is wrong when the front of the question is "Do you know..."

user73963
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  • What grammar book was it from? – ʇolɐǝz ǝɥʇ qoq Oct 26 '14 at 02:15
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    The actual question is not "What is X?" but "Do you know X?", so X has to be a construction which can act as a noun phrase. A question cannot be used this way; instead, we use a construction called a 'free' or 'fused' relative clause or an 'embedded question', which does not invert the subject and auxiliary verb. See the link above. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 26 '14 at 02:19
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    Related: http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/36623/do-you-know-wheres-linda-vs-do-you-know-where-linda-is, http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/17778/how-it-works-vs-how-does-it-work, http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/3538/correct-usage-of-verb-and-pronoun-in-the-sentence. – Damkerng T. Oct 26 '14 at 02:21

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