How to sort Irish surnames which begin with O'

Many Irish surnames (including mine) start with O'. This can be troublesome on websites that treat the apostrophe after the O as an unmatched quotation mark. However, when dealing with names in the Irish language (a.k.a.. Gaelic), it gets even worse.

My name in the Irish language in Briain Ó Donnabhain. The word Ó in the Irish language means "from" - in this context it means "descended from"According to this web site, it is derived from the words "donn," which means "brown," and "dubhan," a derivative of "dubh," which means "black." Apparently my distant ancestors had black and brown cows and hence the name stuck and got passed down the generations.

Where it gets confusing is for the female members of the family. In the Irish language, the Ó prefix is reserved for males only. My daughter's Irish name is N. ní Donnabhain (the prefix ní indicates she was born to a Donnabhain). If my wife chose to use her Irish name it would be F. uí Donnabhain (the prefix uí indicate she is married to a Donnabhain).

It gets really complicated when producing a phone directory (if such things still exist) and voting register. Using normal sorting rules a single family would be sorted all over the register rather than having them grouped together as would be normal for families with English names.

However, a number of years ago a politician named Éamon Ó Cuív who was a politician representing an Irish speaking area managed to solve the problem (in fact he sorted it out - pun intended). He decided that the prefix in Irish should be ignored for sorting purposes. Unfortunately the authorities did not agree with Éamon and he was fored to take lega action in the High court to get his proposal adopded.

Some people claimed that his real reason for takin the case is that his name Ó Cuív is now appearing with the C names ar the top of the ballot paper rather than in the middle/end with the O names