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Personally, I've used both versions. Nevertheless: Belated birthday is nonsense, since the anniversary is the anniversary, and cannot be postponed even if the celebrations are. Belated happy birthday, strictly, is also nonsense because the birthday has already gone and may or may not have been happy. Therefore I would suggest something along the lines of: Belated birthday wishes (as suggested in another answer) Hope you had a Happy Birthday. Sorry I missed it / Sorry I'm late. However, you find ' beloved ' more frequently used than 'loved' when you are using it as an adjective. So, to answer this, if you are using the word as an adjective, prefer which is more common and understandable - beloved . The plural of beloved is beloveds, therefore you would say: My beloveds. By that note, my beloved can only be understood as one beloved , one person. Unless that listener's English is poor, that is. For a further example, there's a book called Lovers and Beloveds. Also, what about Dante's Two Beloveds? Re-examining key passages in Dante’s oeuvre in the light of the crucial issue of moral choice, this book provides a new thematic framework for interpreting the Divine Comedy. Olivia Holmes ... 4 Looking at the original spelling in Shakespeare's sonnets, he was somewhat inconsistent. But he never used an accent, and he generally used belov'd for the two-syllable pronunciation (which the OP spells beloved ) and beloved for the three-syllable pronunciation (which the OP spells belovèd).
