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I used to work in a Japanese restaurant where the owner and his wife always
wrote 「かつを」 rather than 「かつお」. I thought this was kind of cool, so I looked it
up. The only information I could find was that it was likely a misspelling
from before the reform. After all, the reform would have been in effect for
only a couple years by the time they were learning to write.

In any case, this got me curious. Are there any words today that the Japanese
tend to write with を, whether officially accepted or not?
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kana hiragana spelling names obsolete-kana
Are there words still containing を either officially or colloquially?
Officially, no; using を for anything other than the object marker is
nonstandard spelling. However, it's often used informally to create a sense of
archaism and/or tradition. You'll see a lot of names of washoku restaurants
and ryokan and things with pre-reform spellings, and some even go so far as to
include [hentaigana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana "hentaigana") in
their signs. Some people also will use を/ヲ in usernames etc online, simply to
be interesting, I suppose.

I imagine that your restaurant's owners were using を either out of simply
being used to it and not bothering to change, or out of a conscious decision
to not adapt their spelling to the reform when they're writing for themselves.
As far as I know, this is a lot less common - really very few people actively
use pre-reform spellings in everyday life. People who work with older texts on
a regular basis might use these spellings in specific words, but there's no
words that the majority of the populace use を in outside of as the object
marker.
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According to standard orthography (post-reform) no words are ever written with
を, except names and words whose writers exercise "artistic license".

But I don't think in your case it's a misspelling, rather a conscious choice
of adhering to pre-reform orthography. (かつお was かつを before the spelling
reform.) Opposed to new nonsense uses, like ヲタク (or ワヰン), I think かつを may
actually be considered somewhat classy (that would depend on the restaurant
though).

Besides restaurants and onsen, ryokan, whatever, を is also reasonably common
in names. I have met a number of women called かをる or かをり. (Of course that's
because 薫り・香り was かをり before the spelling reform.) Similarly with other
obsolete かな like ゑ (e.g. 澄恵 すみゑ) or the repetition mark ゝ (e.g. なゝせ). I have
never seen obsolete かな in men's names and I don't really expect to either,
because of the soft/traditional connotation of かな. (That said, maybe some
parents name their boy レヲン – it's [happened to a dog
already](http://ameblo.jp/tomaru-ko-bou/entry-11890074842.html) – just because
[they can](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11937/legal-
characters-for-first-names-include-hiragana-katakana-jinmeiyo-and-joyo). Ateji
for foreign names, as in [零音](http://name.m3q.jp/list?s=%E3%82%8C&g=1&page=9),
as a trend is maybe already on its way out, so next up might be foreign names
with obsolete katakana, who knows.)
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