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Clinton Smullen
Every time Kevin O'Leary shops online, his apostrophe gets in the way.
"You'll have everything done and on the last page it will say you have an error because your name doesn't match exactly," said Mr. O'Leary, a Chattanooga resident.
The luck of the Irish apparently does not apply to databases because the tiny piece of punctuation that Mr. O'Leary's last name shares with thousands of other Irish-Americans confuses computers.
This proves a challenge whenever he's on a Web site buying plane tickets or applying for a credit card. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga computer system also doesn't recognize his apostrophe and neither does Bank of America, he said.
"Some Web sites do and some Web sites don't," Mr. O'Leary explained.
Count the Tennessee Department of Safety in the "don't" category. Mr. O'Leary's New York birth certificate is correct, but when he moved to Tennessee last year, his driver's license lists him as "Kevin Oleary."
The O prefix, which signifies "grandson" in Gaelic, is troublesome online because most computer code is set up to recognize the apostrophe as a break in text, said Dr. Clinton Smullen, professor of computer science and director of academic and research computing services for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
He called the O dilemma a "big deal" in the world of computer coding, but said it is fixable if special coding called "escape marks" is inserted before each apostrophe.
"The real solution is to have more careful coding on the front end," he said.
But the problem pre-dates the computer age. Ringgold resident Bob O'Kelley remembered having trouble calling home when he was overseas in the Army in the 1950s and 1960s.
"Trying to convince a Vietnamese or Japanese or Korean operator what an apostrophe is, you soon learn to avoid using it," he said.
Mail comes to Jean and James O'Quinn's home in Hixson with many kinds of wrong names: James W. O. Quinn, James W. Oquinn and James Quinn.
"A lot of stuff doesn't have the 'O' on it at all," Mrs. O'Quinn said. "We just let it go."
Dalton resident Harold O'Keefe said he runs into O-related obstacles "all of the time."
He once went to vote in Dalton and unintentionally confused the poll worker who tried to look him up in the registry.
"The guy couldn't find me and he was going nuts," Mr. O'Keefe said. "Finally, he said 'Ah, it's the comma up in the air!'"
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Andy began working at the Times Free Press in July 2008 as a general assignment reporter before focusing on Northwest Georgia and Georgia politics in May of 2009. Before coming to the Times Free Press, Andy worked for the Anniston Star, the Rome News Tribune and the Campus Carrier at Berry College, where he graduated with a communications degree in 2006. He is pursuing a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Tennessee ...
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