Is this specific to the Lithuanian language? How come I've never seen an apostrophe at the end of a name like this (other than possessives)?
See Ilya M. Sobol' on Wikipedia.
-
Voting to close this because Googling "Russian transliteration" and then looking at his (Russian) name on that Wikipedia page would give you the answer.– alphabetMar 12 at 4:35
-
I’m voting to close this question because it a simple matter of Russian transliteration.– AntonMar 12 at 8:17
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
It's a diacritic marker
The key is in the original Russian name: Илья Меерович Соболь. The last letter there (ь) is a soft sign, which is sometimes represented by an apostrophe in transliterations. Ukrainian works similarly, except they often just use the apostrophe instead of a letter.
This same apostrophe is found in Kievan Rus' (Ки́евская Русь) and this etymology for бюллетень (Kazakh):
Borrowed from Russian бюллете́нь (bjulleténʹ), from French bulletin, from Italian bullettino, from Latin bulla.
To native speakers of English, it means nothing and may be confused with a regular apostrophe. Judging from the other people (and entities) by the name of "Соболь" on Wikipedia, it's usually omitted entirely.
