@ vacri:

You didn’t mention this one “say it’s initial” there shouldn’t have been an ‘ in that! it’s is a concatenation of IT IS! You meant the possessive ITS.
Your comments section also doesn’t allow ‘ in email addresses. i love irony.

It is not difficult to use an email alias.

That means you can have
frogurt.d’mangello@we.like.subdomains.in.our.emails.hsbc.com
but you will deliver to
frogurt.dmangello@we.like.subdomains.in.our.emails.hsbc.com.

So if you hit a website that doesn’t like the apostrophe, you are free to omit it with no issue.

I’ve been using OBoyle as my name since the 1980’s wherever I think computers might be involved. Got to work a year ago at a new employer. It keeps the notion of the O being a prefix by capitalising the B, but avoids the apostrophe’s technical issues. Found out I couldn’t sign up for internal mailing lists (run using a third party list server) because my email address had been created with the apostrophe. Spent a few days getting it changed. No problems since. Of course, as a result, my name now has 2 legal spellings. Even banks know me without the apostrophe. Passport and birth certificate use the apostrophe, though.

@ Luke Maciak:
This is crap. My name is O’Connor and it is now 2012 and these problems still persist. I refuse to sign up and/or do business with any site that will not allow my name. Everyone with an apostrophe in their name stand up for yourself an make the computer programmers change this bug. Refuse to deal with any site that won’t allow it and fight for yourself.

Funny story… I have an ‘ in my name, and I used to work at HSBC. My current work uses the ‘ in my email address. I too am a developer, and I happen to like the ‘ in my name. This is pretty simple, there is a standard, if programmers are too lazy to develop to the standard then they can screw off. If someone cannot contact me, or if I cannot contact them, because they are using poorly written software then they should take the time to find something that is better written (and complain). The only way things like this get fixed is if people raise the issue.

@ Shannon:

Screw that. I *HAVE* an apostrophe in my last name, and I’m a developer. I block apostrophes from emails every chance I get. It is more hassle than it is worth.

Not only is the apostrophe allowed but it’s part of someone’s name. It’s only properly respectful that it should be allowed. If software can’t handle it, it should be fixed.

That said, we ban it here. Just makes things work easier :)

With the Squirrelmail above, are you sure you don’t just need to disable GPC_MAGIC_QUOTES? That’ll fsck you up all the time.

I have yet to see e-mail software — client, server, anything — that properly parses to the RFCs. I have never seen anyone do it right, not even Google. If someone can show me one that does, please inform me. The only correct implementation I am aware of is the Perl library that you linked to, but no one uses it.

And addresses can be pretty hairy too. This is a valid address according to the RFCs,

“Doe, John@>Home”@hotmail.com

But no one will even try to take it. Notice, this blog software also didn’t quite parse it correctly when trying to form the mailto href, though it did pretty well.

I just came across an apostrophe based email address – my first after about 13 or 14 years and your piece above was helpful.

On balance it seems like most admins disallow apostrophes this as it is far from universal in application and what most people need is an email address that will work on the maximum number of systems.

Yes, the 8-bit foreign language domains compliance is very handy to have when your end users lack the keyboard space for “squiggles”. I’m sure your RFC compliant MTA will be very handy when your boss gives you THAT 5am call because he cannot type out the email address for Mr.Miyagi and he needs to send that sucker right NOW! I am sure you can do the the correct x– translation in your sleep.