O' + nom (O'Brico, etc.)

Wordy McWordface

Wordy McWordface

Senior Member
SSBE (Standard Southern British English)
On a recent visit to France, I noticed a lot of restaurants and retail outlets with the name O' (something) - for example, a DIY store called O'Brico, a KFC-style fast food bar called O'Chicken, and several others.

What's going on here? What's with the O+apostrophe? Is it a gimmicky variation of Au, combined with some kind of faux-Irish nomenclature?
 
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    • snarkhunter said:
    This tends to have become a fashionable trend in France over the last few years. There are now plenty of businesses using that template for their name (... even "O'Tacos").
    Click to expand...
    Thank you. That, in fact, answers my second question. I was intending to ask whether the O' was a recent fashion.

    I've been visiting France regularly since the 1970s but I'd never noticed this "template" before. This latest trip was my first visit post-pandemic.
     
    The brand O'Cedar (household cleaners made from cedar tree) of US origin, dates back to 1913 (and was soon imported in France) but the brands created on the same model in France are more recent (2007 for O'Tacos).
     
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