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
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