Back to the original post hi Bean! - I was surprised and dismayed, when I travelled in Australia, to discover that the apostrophe is nearly extinct there. Every time something was named for someone, there was no apostrophe to indicate the possessive; eg, Ayers Rock should really be Ayer's Rock, since it's named (by whities, anyway) for some feller whose last name was Ayer. (Similarly, his house in Adelaide is called Ayers House.)

Actually Ayers Rock *should* be Uluru - and increasingly, it is.