Re: Reason for African American names using apostrophes?
in reply to a message by Tempestgirl
In latin origin surnames there´s only one reason to use apostrophes: replacing a letter. Italian surnames as D'Angelo, D'Amore, D'Alessandro the apostrophe replaces the "e" (De Angelo, De Alessando, De Amore). In Italian and French they use it for the same reason also in regular words.