WHAT’S IN a name? People in the west Dublin suburb of Palmerston, D20 have long been spelling it Palmerstown. It’s how most streets in the area are spelt too. But the suburb’s official name has no “w” and it irks locals. So in a few weeks’ time, they’ll get to vote to make the “w” official.

It’s taken concerned residents a while to get this far: South Dublin councillors voted to have a plebiscite on the matter last July. Recently, the council put notices in the papers to alert anyone qualified to vote to let them know by the February 26th deadline. Electors will get ballots posted to them and by spring, we’ll know whether it’s Palmers-ton or -town.

Good to know that we can get worked up over grammar and spelling, even in these troubled times. Just like our next door neighbours, where Birmingham city council has recently ruled that apostrophes should no longer feature on road signs. The decision ends decades of dispute over whether places like “Kings Norton” and “Druids Heath” should have the possessive punctuation mark, and led to a lively online row led by the Apostrophe Protection Society with one commentator suggesting “if cost is an issue, why doesn’t Birmingham city council simply commandeer the tens of thousands of greengrocers’ apostrophes . . . the endless supply of carrot’s, dvd’s and haircut’s?”.