I'm treating this sixth use of the apostrophe separately from the others only because I learned something while I was researching for this blog. I wanted to highlight it so I might be able to remember it.
We all know at least one O'Riley, or O'Neill, or O'Hara and we probably thought, if we thought about it all all, that the apostrophe in these names is a contraction, indicating the omission of the "f" in the word "of."
Sean O'Riley would be Sean "of" Riley, for example, (meaning Sean is the son and grandson of the senior Riley's).
But, according to Lynn Truss, the "O" in Irish names is an English form of the old Irish word "au," which means "grandson."
So there you go. Who knew?
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