47. Article Errors with Proper Nouns

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It is not true to say that some proper nouns always have “the” and some never have it

GENERAL FEATURES OF ARTICLE USAGE WITH PROPER NOUNS

“Proper” nouns are a subset of English nouns, alongside “countable” and “uncountable” ones. Happily, whereas these other kinds can be quite hard to identify (see 14. Noun Countability Clues 1), proper nouns are more easily recognisable. It is tempting to say they are “names” of things, though in fact many names are not proper nouns (see 206. Ways of Conveying a Name). More precisely, proper nouns name particular types of things. They are also recognisable in reading from their spelling with a capital first letter regardless of their sentence position (though see 62. Choices with Capital Letters).

Proper nouns also seem to have easier article usage rules: the same noun tends to have the same article – usually the or usually “zero” – wherever it is used. Normally, it is the basic meaning of the noun – which fixes it as “proper” in the first place – that also determines its article. This is different from article usage before other nouns, which more widely need the in some situations and either a(n) or “zero” in others (see 110. Nouns without “the” or “a”).

Nevertheless, article usage with proper nouns is not completely without problems. What I wish to do here is to show how the normal article choice with a proper noun sometimes has to be changed. I am not talking here about space-saving reasons for dropping the (the topic of 158. Abbreviated Sentences), but rather grammatical rules. Other Guinlist posts that have something to say about the include 6. Adjectives with no Noun 1: People-Naming,  89. Using “the” with General Meaning,  110. Nouns without “the” or “a”,  178. How to Write a Heading and 235. Special Uses of “the”.

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LIST OF PROPER NOUN TYPES

The way grammar books tend to approach the use of the before proper nouns is by listing the types of things that proper nouns with and without the typically name. The list might look something like the following:

Without ‘the’

People (Alicia, Ghosh)
Cities (Paris, Monrovia)
Airports and Harbours (Entebbe Airport, Sydney Harbour)
Languages (Swahili, Hindi)
Sports Teams (Manchester United, Queen’s Park)
Streets (Park Lane, Trafalgar Square, Broadway)
Planets (Earth, Mars, Venus)
Most Countries (Ireland, North Korea)
Most Mountains (Mount McKinley, Table Mountain)
Most Academic Subjects (History, English Language)
Most Shops and Companies (Barclays Bank, Marconi – but The BBC)

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With ‘the’

Rivers (The Indus, The Missouri)
Deserts (The Kalahari, The Atacama)
Mountain ranges (The Andes, The Ruwenzori)
Seas/Oceans (The South China Sea, The Arctic Ocean)
Plural Countries/Areas (The Maldives, The West Indies)
Most Newspapers (The Times, The Economist)
Museums and Art Galleries (The Louvre, The Prado, The National Gallery)
Decades (The Eighties)

In addition, some names of buildings have the and some do not. We say The Eiffel Tower, The White House, The Taj Mahal and The London Underground, but we also say Blackpool Tower, London Bridge, Notre Dame Cathedral and Buckingham Palace.

There are also some noun types that are less rigid in their article requirements. Days and months (Friday, July) tend to have “zero” but also allow the normal choice between the and a(n) (e.g. a Friday in July, the Friday when it happened). Compass points (North, South etc.) may not have a capital at all, but when they do they seem to drop the as often as they need it (see 151. Ways of Using Compass Words). Seasons (Summer, Winter) are similar.

Note furthermore that proper nouns normally used with the have to drop it after the whole, e.g. the whole United States, the whole Nile, even though the remains necessary after the otherwise exactly equivalent the whole of (the whole of the United States: see 308. Complexities of “Whole”, #2). This rule applies solely to proper nouns that normally have the; those that disallow the combine only with the whole of and do not change their article usage (e.g. the whole of France, not *the whole France).

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PROPER NOUNS USED LIKE ADJECTIVES

The Guinlist post 38. Nouns Used Like Adjectives shows how a noun is often usable before another noun in order to describe it like adjectives do. The post also points out that such “adjectival” nouns have no influence on the presence or absence of a(n) or the before them, this being  the prerogative of the noun they are describing, as in this example:

(a) World wealth has greatly increased. 

The adjectival noun here is world. When it is not adjectival, we would expect to find the in front of it, but we do not find any article here because wealth is the controlling noun, and its uncountability rules out a while its generic meaning rules out the (see 110. Nouns without “the” or “a”).

Proper nouns are as easily used like adjectives as other nouns are (see 136. Types of Description by Nouns). They have to follow the same rules for the presence or absence of a(n)/the. Consider these:

(b) The Manila climate can be uncomfortable.

(c) Arctic Ocean wildlife is suffering. 

In (b), the city name Manila, which would not normally follow the, does so because the next noun climate is singular and countable, and hence needs an article. This means the in (b) does not really “go with” Manila – but it still needs to be positioned just before it. The only way Manila could be used before climate in its normal way, without an article, is by being given an apostrophe ending – Manila’s climate – a very possible alternative (see 58. Optional Apostrophe Endings).

In (c) the normal the found with Arctic Ocean is absent because of wildlife, an uncountable noun that here has general meaning and is hence, like wealth, unable to have an article (though The Arctic Ocean’s wildlife is also possible).

Thus, placing a proper noun in front of another noun in order to describe it is a noteworthy situation where the normal rules for using or not using an article with a proper noun may not seem to apply.

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PROPER NOUNS THAT CAN REPRESENT DIFFERENT POSSIBILITIES

Besides day and month nouns, some referring to people and places stand for more than one possibility. This is true, for example, of London, which is the name of a Canadian city as well as the capital of the UK. In ordinary usage we do not need to clarify which London we are talking about, since the context will make it obvious. If we do have to give a clarification, however, we can put the in front of the proper noun. The following example is from the post 34. Relative Pronouns and Commas:

(d) The London in Canada is sometimes confused with the London in England. 

As this sentence shows, using the to clarify a proper noun is likely to involve descriptive wording after the noun, in this case preposition phrases (for an overview of the possibilities, see 252. Descriptive Wording after Nouns 1). Note, though, that there is at least one kind of following descriptive wording that does not result in the use of the before a proper noun (see 77. Apposition, #1f).

In some cases we can even use a before names of people and places, especially the former. Sentences like the following are fairly common in the workplace: 

(e) An Alan Jones is here to see you. 

The article a makes it clear that the speaker does not think the addressee knows this Mr Jones. This use of a might in fact be a short way of saying a person called (Alan Jones). 

Also worth mentioning here is the use of one before a person’s name (which was asked about once by a reader of this blog ). This usage also indicates that the person is not known, but seems to suggest in addition that he/she is somehow unusual or strange.

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PROPER NOUNS WITH VARIABLE MEANINGS

Sometimes we have to go against a normal article rule because a proper noun is not being used with its normal meaning. Take the name The London Underground. This is quite often written without the in official notices to passengers: 

(f) London Underground regrets that no trains are running today. 

I think that the reason for the absence of the here is that the noun is a company name (like American Express or British Petroleum). When the is present, the speaker is more likely to be thinking about the actual buildings (trains and railway lines) than its management (see 235. Special Uses of “the”, #4):

(g) The London Underground gets hot in summer. 

A similar (though not the same) thing happens with English Language, the name of a subject on a timetable. If it is written the English language (with the and a small “l”), it is no longer being thought of as a subject, but is just the name of the language (not a “proper” noun at all). There is a similarity here to familiar contrasts like the following, which involve ordinary nouns:

(h) The doctor went to the hospital/prison/college.

(i) The doctor went to hospital/prison/college. 

With the, we understand that a visit was made for a reason that is not clear. Without it, the visit is to be a “customer” of the place visited (as patient, inmate or student). The verb action is more passive (see 21. Active Verbs with Non-Active Meanings). The similarity is that the usage without the again implies a (received) human activity rather than a static object.