The Royals have an up-and-coming prospect named Kila Ka’aihue. At the moment, there is no issue, as the Royals never had any other players beginning with “Ka”, he’ll go (if he makes the big club) into my collection between Waly Joyner and Greg Keatley. However, should they get other "Ka"s in the future, where would they go? Does the ’ get ignored entirely, or does it come before A, or after Z?
Punctuation is sorted before letters, and nothing comes before anything. So a properly sorted list (with fictional names added) would look like:
Joyner
Ka
Ka’aihue
Ka’ualei
Kaanan
Kaline
Keatley
Google Books’s page for Mamaka Kaiao: A Modern Hawaiian Vocabulary, says the Hawaiian alphabet is, in alphabetical order:
So the 'okina is last. Read the whole first page I linked to, though, because it’s easy to forget that the 'okina is actually a letter in itself rather than punctuation as the mark is in English.
Except that it’s not punctuation, it’s a marking indicating a glottal stop, so it’s a “letter” in itself.
Hmm, this brings up the question: how do you properly alphabetize names that are in different languages? Hawaiian names will alphabetize very differently in English vs Hawaiian, even ignoring the stop letter.
So where would it be in the English alphabet?
Since it’s at the very end of the Hawaiian alphabet, I’d put it in the same position in the English alphabet. Treat it as a letter after “Z”.
I suspect you’d be in the minority. True, it isn’t an apostrophe, but in English it is usually typed as one. I think it would probably be ignored in alphabetising most lists, just the same as, say, O’Leary would be listed between Okinawa and Oliphant.
I’d alphabetise Ka’aihue as if it were spelt Kaaihue, if I was doing it in English.
Vaguely related: I’ve noticed that apostrophes, hyphens and such get removed on airline tickets, so Mr Ka’aihue is presumably KAAIHUE/KMR when he flies to games.
Well, that’s an interesting sidenote about hyphens, which are a more commonly encountered feature of Euro-American names.
So is Bob Baker-Smith alphabetized differently than Bob Bakersmith?
As a librarian who used to file in card catalogues, my instinct would be to ignore the glottal stop and file with other words starting “Kaa”.
Yes, because it would be filed as “Bob Baker Smith”.
Various alphabetizing systems will have punctuation and spaces sorted as though they are letters too, but I find this highly unintuitive. Unless you are sorting something for a system that already has rules in place, it’s much easier to file and find things if you just ignore anything except letters and numbers.
I would treat it as I do any punctuation (yes, even though in Hawaiian, it’s a letter) … alphabetize as if it were a space.
Baker-Smith --> Baker Smith
O’Leary --> O Leary
Ka’aihue --> Ka aihue
Can you tell the difference between:
" ’ " & " ` "?
They are not the same character but are usually used interchangeably. The natural sort according to the current modern Hawaiian rules are different from the old. The sort order according to Windows or Apple is different.
“ā”, “ē”, “ī”, “ō”, ''ū" are also legitimate characters in Hawaiian which cause confusion in alphabetizing.
I agree. The index in the UK gazetteer at work includes spaces and hyphens in alphabetising, so, for instance, you’ll get:
…
Little Abbotsville
Little Cruddington
Little Hampton
Little Ponsonby-under-Waffling
Little Quimton
Little Westbury
Littlebury
Littledean
Littlehampton
Littleton
…
and, even more ridiculously,
…
Newcastle
Newcastle Emlyn
Newcastle on Clun
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle-under-Lyme
…
How is that ever logical? It makes it a real chore to find places if you’re unsure whether they are one word or two, or hyphenated.