Les O'Dell

From The Southern Illinoisan, March 17, 2009

Remember St. Patrick’s Day as a student in elementary school? Every year one of the ways my grade school teachers would celebrate the Irish was to place an O and an apostrophe in front of each student’s name for the duration of the day. On March 17^th, Jimmy Norris would become Jimmy O’Norris, Michele Graham would answer to Michele O’Graham, and even Scott Olson would be tagged for the day as Scott O’Olson.  It happened to all of my classmates, except me.  The reason is simple; see it up there on the byline? My last name is already Irish-sounding and features not one, but two capital letters separated by a hanging punctuation mark—the apostrophe. You might think I’d take pride even as a tow-headed youngster that I didn’t need the add-on capital O and apostrophe to celebrate the day, but you’d be wrong.

Ask any of my colleagues whom has been burdened throughout life with what I call O-osis. You know them, they have last names like O’Neill, O’Brien and O’Connor. While that extra capital and the apostrophe do not necessarily make life difficult, the do make it inconvenient. Let me give some examples of the things that we encounter every day.

First of all, most corporations and entities don’t know what to do with the apostrophe. Mass mailers, those people who send all of the junk mail crowding our mailboxes, must have simple names like Smith and Jones because they simply do not understand or use apostrophes. I receive a lot of unsolicited mail addressed “Dear Mr. Dell” and even more addressed to “Les O. Dell. Apparently, their computer systems aren’t smart enough to recognize punctuation, thereby assigning a space in the midst of my last name. To them O is my middle initial and Dell is my surname.  Note to mass marketers: the quickest way to get me to completely disregard what you send me is for it to be addressed with this blatant error.

Picking up any document that a government or business office is holding for you should be a simple task. That is unless you have an apostrophe in your name. Technically, names spelled O’ come before Ob, regardless of what letter is after the apostrophe. For that reason, O’Dell comes before Oakes, but very few people understand and follow this simple rule of alphabetization.

Think for a moment of those test or survey sheets that require students completely fill-in the little circles corresponding to the letters in their names. These sheets don’t include a little bubble to darken for an apostrophe. What are those of us with apostrophes supposed to do? Leave a space? That’s not right. Skip the apostrophe all together? That’s wrong as well and akin to asking someone named Theresa to completely leave out the “h”.

When I tried to file state income taxes on the Internet just a few weeks ago, I was treated with disrespect by the State of Illinois because of the apostrophe. As I entered all of the required information, including the correct spelling of my last name, I was greeted with a terse error message: “We are unable to process your last name. Please enter only letters and spaces.”  Other online forms haven’t been as kind. “Your last name is invalid,” they tell me.

Even my driver’s license is wrong. For years, my name, according to the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, was spelled out as “Les – space – L – space – O – space – Dell”, again, making my last name appear to be Dell.  In 1990, I called then-Secretary of State Jim Edgar’s office to ask when the state may finally recognize the apostrophe. I was told then that a computer upgrade was planned “within a few years” and that the technological advances should lead to punctuation finally making its way onto my driver’s license.

When I renewed my driver’s license last year (just 18 years after my initial inquiry), I asked—just for kicks—if the computer system could handle the apostrophe. The clerk at the driver’s license facility was polite, but told me no, the system still didn’t have apostrophes.  I was told, however, that because of the Patriot Act, the name on my driver’s license had to match the name on my social security card. While that meant I had to put my full first name on my license, it didn’t lead to an apostrophe, so may license still doesn’t match my social security card.  I was, however, given the choice this time between O-space-Dell and O-no space-Dell. I chose without the space, despite the fact that it is printed in all caps so it looks as though my name should be pronounced “Odle” instead of the correct “O’Dell”.

I called Jesse White’s office to get the latest word on the lack of apostrophes. “This issue does come up every few years as a concern from people who have apostrophes in their names,” Secretary of State spokesman Dennis Krier told me. “It’s on our radar, but it’s not a priority for us.” I think the State of Illinois hates us.

My grade school classmates may have thought having an apostrophe was fun, like they had been given the luck of the Irish, but I know better. At least they only had to deal with the effects of O-osis one day a year. I get to endure apostrophe discrimination 365 days a year, always have to spell my name (“it’s O, apostrophe, capital-D, e, l, l) and constantly put up with those who choose to ignore a very valuable part of my name. That apostrophe means a lot to me. It’s part of who I am; it’s part of my heritage.

Oh, and speaking of heritage, did I mention that O’Dell isn’t even Irish? It’s British, but that’s another story.

From The Southern Illinoisan, March 17, 2009