Grammar Girl here, in honor of International Apostrophe Day, August 16th, today we're

going to talk about apostrophes in science fiction and fantasy names.

Why do authors think apostrophes make characters seem exotic?

Who started it?

And why do some people find it annoying?

Apostrophes in science fiction and fantasy names are often attributed to Anne McCaffrey,

whose popular Dragon Writers of Perne series included character names such as Flaar,

with an apostrophe after the F.

Dragon Flight, the first book in the series, was published in 1968, but appeared in short

story form in Analog Science Fiction Magazine in late 1967.

Although McCaffrey may have been extraordinarily influential in popularizing this use of the

apostrophe, I did find a few earlier examples.

Many a month before McCaffrey's first short story came out, Star Trek aired an episode

with Vulcan women named Tupau and Tupring, both of which had an apostrophe after the

T.

Dune, which was published two years earlier in 1965, included the name Maud Deb, which

applies to both a creature and a constellation and has an apostrophe before the Deb.

And I have to note that a listener just showed me that I can use Google Translate to help

me get the pronunciation of foreign words right, and now I'm venturing into fantasy words,

so I'm sorry if I got Maud Deb wrong or anything else.

Finally, in 1955, Detective Comics had a character whose first and last name had an apostrophe,

John Johns.

...