I think we're all being way too analytical about this. It's been my experience that people kept or dropped the O' as they felt like it on whatever day they happened to write it or say it. For example, my mother and her sister both came to the States. The family name is O'Leary. My mother dropped it and signed herself or gave as her maiden name Mary Leary (most of the time, unless when she decided to write Mary O'Leary). Her sister consistently kept it and always signed Katherine O'Leary. Similarly, my distant cousin, Noreen Sullivan was always Sullivan, even though the family in Beara is O'Sullivan. What's more, very few people in Beara use the O' in everyday speech. Most of the O'Sullivans there are simply referred to as Sullivan or by a branch name. But everyone always knows that these names are preceded by the O' formally. Another case in point. My grandfather's name was John O'Leary. On the 1911 census he is listed not as "John O'Leary", but as "Sylvy Leary". That's presumably what he told the census taker, or what the census taker, who may have already known the family, wrote down that particular day. However, that name is the family nickname, not his actual given name. But I know who he is because there's my mother, age 2, and her brothers, ages 5, 4, and 3, and my great-grandparents and my grandmother, etc. It really doesn't matter what he chose to call himself that day or what the census taker wrote down. He was who he was. People used whatever they felt comfortable using on the day they were using it. To analyze it further for some sort of sociological or historical meaning is, in my view, quite pointless. Maggie Duffy Manhattan and Beara