John, Marco, The practice of writing anglicized Irish names in English orthography is rather interesting. Original "Ó Briain" is written "O'Brien" where the apostrophe both mimics the original acute, and incidentally functions as a kind of hyphen, showing that the two parts of the name are considered (in English-language grammatical terms) as a single unit not to be broken. (In Irish of course the "Ó" can vary to "Uí" in the genitive and is a noun in its own right.) Generally, therefore, one doesn't find "O' Brien" written in good English typography, the end-of-line form *"O'-Brien" is not found. When setting Irish I would normally avoid breaking "Ó Briain" at the end of a line as well, as it isn't very nice looking.
The reanalysis of Ó- and Mac- names is also seen in the treatment of Mac as an inseparable part of the anglicized name. This is most often shown by deleting the space after the Mac (or reduced Mc) -- much as Alain does by deleting the space between La and Bonté. Interestingly, the OED notes that the prefix has been variously written: "Macdonald, MacDonald, McDonald, M<sup>c</sup>Donald, M'Donald". I can't say I've seen the last one in any text more recent than the 18th century, but it is certainly indicative of the use of apostrophe as a mark of elision. -- Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com
