When cleaning up surnames on the board, do we put the apostrophe in names such as O'Connor, O'Malley, etc?.....or do we leave it out; OConnor, OMalley. Thanks for your help, Marilyn

Marilyn --- A little known fact is that the O is actually a separate word in Celtic names. "While the Mac, both in Highland and Irish names, has often become incorporated, the O has generally resisted this. The name Ogilvie is an exception, but even this was formerly written O'Gilvie, and is sometimes found thus written yet. It is said also to be the solitary instance of a Highland O, but, perhaps, if we looked closely, we should find others. In at least one northern Irish name the O has become incorporated into the body of the surname, and changed into an A, viz., 'O'Gnimh,' which was once anglicised 'O'Gneeve,' but now mostly 'Agnew.' In the North the O is pronounced very short and obscure, and this makes the corruption or suppression all the easier. What the O was--what it really meant--used to exercise many foreigners and even some Irishmen greatly, and even yet, though its meaning in Irish is thoroughly known, men are not agreed as to what its true Aryan analogues are. But it is no abbreviation--no preposition--it is like Mac, a full substantive. It is only the modern form of a word which was formerly spelt ua (still so spelt in its literal sense) signifying at first a grandson, and then any remote descendant, as O'Briain (O'Brien), descendant of Brian. In old Irish the word was aue, which would represent a prehistoric Irish *auas or *avas. Now if *auas had lost an initial p--as is the case with many of our Irish words that now begin with a vowel or a liquid--as Ir. athair (father) for *p-athair, iasc (fish) for *p-iasc, lan (full) for *p-lán, etc., we could infer an original *p-auas which might be compared with the Latin puer, poir, and the Greek pais (a boy, a son). " Whilst we should not over meddle with a poster's post, I can see how one would be inclined to "restore" the apostrophe. And based upon the snipped above from an essay regarding Celtic names, very few actually have a combined form when the O rather than the Mac is used. Consider that the poster *should* know how their family names are spelled. Cheers, Lauren On 9/7/06, Tribehunter@aol.com <Tribehunter@aol.com> wrote: > When cleaning up surnames on the board, do we put the apostrophe in > names such as O'Connor, O'Malley, etc?.....or do we leave it out; > OConnor, OMalley. > > Thanks for your help, > Marilyn > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to BOARDS-ADMINS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >