The problem for me began so long ago, around 450AD, it blurs the lines between history and legend. St Patrick (the patron saint of beer), took a magic staff that Jesus (the patron saint of chocolate) gave him posthumously, and blessed the shield of my ancient ancestor – Conall Gulban, upon which the family crest magically appeared – a hand wanking a cross. Conall was kind of an important dude, being an Irish king, and son of famous king Niall. His baptism from St Patrick signified the beginning of the “Sons of Dhomhnaill” family line. It’s at this point that my surname is codified – O’Dhomhnaill / O’Donnell. The O and apostrophe meaning “Ancestors of”.

And it’s that fucking apostrophe that is ruining my online life. Fast forward to today and that god damned apostrophe breaks website forms and invalidates my logins and sign ups more times than I care to experience. Some genius egghead in the mid 20th century decided that apostrophes would be a “special” character that tells computers to “start or end here”. This is called “delimiting” in nerd vernacular. I don’t know who was responsible for that decision but surely a tilde (~) or caret (^) would have been better options rather than a character that has been used for several thousands of years in common written language.

O’Connells, O’Dwyers, O’Reillys, D’Silvas, O’Connors, O’Haras and countless other family clans know what I’m talking about. You go to process a transaction in netbanking with your name only to be suddenly thrown out with errors. Or signing up to a website and getting welcomed as “Dylan O”, the rest of your name being guillotined by the server. Or worse, being told that your name is “Invalid” and to try again. Invalid? Fuck you internet – we were here first, it’s you who is invalid!

The problem was especially noticeable when my wife took on my name and was suddenly victim to this global online mistake of history. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she implored, like she may have considered keeping her own name had she known what she was in for. I wouldn’t blame her. On a good website, the apostrophe is handled well and everything works fine. But most will drop my surname, insert backslashes (e.g. Dylan O\\\’Donnell) or refuse to go further until I remove it, which I often do pre-emptively nowadays.

So thank you St Patrick, Connal Gulban, and the anonymous genius egghead who jointly collaborated over 1,500 years separation to make my online identification an unavoidable misery. From all the Irish, Spanish, Scottish and other family clans with apostrophised names – thanks for nothing dickheads.