Because their parents were idiots who decided to sabotage their futures…My first year out of college I worked for my state guv’ment (hee!) in their daycare regulatory branch. I had to register all new children entering state-subsidized daycare centers – I’ve seen some first names with seven syllables…it’s scary.
Also, a trend I HATE with young white couples – throwing a dart at a map of the Western US and naming the kid after that town/state. If I had seen one more Dakota (or D’Kotah), Cheyenne (or Shai-en), or Salt Lake City (ok, ok) I would have screamed.
The only people naming their children Bob, Susan, James, or Margaret are Asian parents…
galen: Or they will take the time to have their name legally changed. It isn’t like you have to show proof that you can juggle rabid hedgehogs while walking a tightrope over a pit of boiling rat sputum to get your name changed.
if the name isn’t English, then assume that the apostrophe is to subsitute the glutral stop in that language. my real name is pinyin without the apostrophe, i should know how confusing it gets
Not a shortening at all. The original Irish, Ó Conchobhair, literally means “from [i.e. descended from] Conchobhar”. I’m not sure how the tradition started of anglicising these names by removing the fada (accent) from the Ó and using it as an apostrophe instead, but one could argue that it’s technically just as incorrect as putting an apostrophe in Bob or Duane or Latonya. Of course, since it’s traditional now, not many people complain.
I thought that’s how they name pickup trucks and SUVs. Denali, Tacoma, Tahoe, Yukon, Durango… (OK, those last two are not technically in the US; I guess their darts must have gone a bit astray.)
I though the Irish used ‘Mac’, the same as the Scottish for this. If not, what is the difference betwee nthe ‘Mac’ used in Ireland and the ‘Mac’ used in Scotland??
And if this is true (sorry, forgot to put this in my first post) why has the Welsh ‘ap’ dropped out of use when the Scottish and Irish versions haven’t? Just a thought.
*In Irish, Ó means ‘grandson of’, therefore ‘descended from’, as ruadh already explained so well. The apostrophe must be a Sassenach substitute for the original acute accent (as in whatmove’s example of Aube’ for Aubé above). I guess it shows clan affiliation.
In Old Irish the word was spelled aue, and it comes from Proto-Indo-European *awo- meaning ‘an adult male relative other than one’s father’, the source of Latin avus ‘grandfather’ > atavism, avunculus ‘maternal uncle’ > avuncular, uncle. (Yes, our word uncle derives via French oncle from this Latin origin). The root has also been used to mean ‘older female relative’ too. For example, Latin avia ‘grandmother’ > ayah (a child’s nursemaid in former colonial Asia).
This Indo-European root appears to be connected with similar words in many languages around the world, possibly derived from a Proto-World root *AYA ‘older female relative’: compare !Kung ’ai ‘mother’; Somali hooyo ‘mother’; Tamil âyaL ‘mother’; Malay ayah ‘father’; Nez Perce ayat ‘grandmother’
Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic mac means ‘son of’, used for the patronymic, as in the Arabic “ibn ‘Alî” (there’s an apostrophe for you, a left-handed one to show the pharyngeal ‘ayn instead of a right-handed one to show the glottal stop hamzah [’]).
The Gaelic word mac ‘son’ may be derived from Proto-Indo-European *magho- ‘young; child, boy’. And it too appears to be related to a Proto-World reconstruction *MAKO ‘child’ — compare Old English magu ‘child, son, man’; Tamil maka ‘child, son’; Kannada maga ‘son’; Bantu manku, mongo ‘child’; Proto-Caucasian *mik‘w- ‘young one’; Proto-Tibeto-Burman mak ‘son-in-law’; Papuan mak ‘child’; Natick mukketchouks ‘boy’; Beothuk magaraguis ‘son’; Acoma mage ‘girl’; Cayuse m’oks ‘baby’; Modoc mukak ‘girl’; Zuñi maki ‘young woman’.
Actually, it literally just means “from”. Though in a name, it commonly came to be used as “grandson of”.
The Welsh ap used to be map, and you can see here why the Celtic languages are divided into P-Celtic (the Brythonic branch, which includes Welsh) and Q-Celtic (the Gaelic branch) - with “Q” here representing the k sound. map and mac are just two examples of how the old Celtic language evolved into these branches, with the former using a p sound where the latter would use a k.
I’ve got a plane to catch, but I’m sure Jomo can elaborate on this point, if he’s so inclined.
Getting back to the original question–I don’t think that this is supposed to be a glottal stop in these cases. I think this is an attempt to Frenchify or Spanishize an otherwise ordinary name, or synthesize a fake foreign name. Someone who doesn’t know either language would not know the rules for the apostrophe. I have seen the name L’Tanya (slightly different than the one that Attrayant gives). Now, someone who saw some French would see the “l’” construct a lot and think of that as a typical French prefix, and might think that you can just put that in front of stuff. But that someone would not realize that the apostrophe indicates a contraction, where the e or a was dropped from le or la when using it with a noun that begins with a vowel.
This is a ridiculous extension of the common propensity to make up names. I guess the making up of new names is not new, although the first time I remember a case of it is when I saw Petula Clark on a TV show and she said her dad just made up her name. This was a very long time ago. :o
I never thought about this before, but if it just means “from” why is it commonly followed by the genitive? The word “ó” meaning “from” would not have a genitive. I think Jomo Mojo may be on to something here.
However, it’s hard to explain why “Ó” doesn’t aspirate the following noun, while the female version “Ní” does.
Why is creating a new name (or a new spelling or appearance of a name) “ridiculous” or “an affectation”? Where do our “normal” names come from? If you look at the list of common names in the appendix of Webster’s Collegiate Dicitonary, the majority of names are either from the Bible, or are derivations of (mostly Anglo) surnames. But what happens if you don’t want to name your son after an apostle or after that guy who brought your ancestors here in the first place? These new names are not embarrassments. They are an attempt to create a new naming tradition free of hundreds of years of white baggage. Maybe Tanya Harding isn’t someone I want to honor by carrying on her name, so instead I create a new name L’Tanya. Perhaps D’kotah is not named after North Dakota, but is named in honor of the Dakota people (and the only reason we spell it “dakota” is because that’s what the first white people to encounter them decided). It is easy to respond to this newness by spreading the urban legend of those poor, poor kids whose parents have burdened them with the names “Aquanetta” or “Siff’letta.” Or by saying that the parents are too ignorant/uneducated to know the proper uses of apostrophes in French and so their name creations turn out wrong. According to Merriam-Webster Online, name means “a word or phrase that constitutes the distinctive designation of a person or thing.” But more importantly, the definition does not include the phrase “and has been used before.”