Bronx vs THE Bronx

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Article here.

Alas, this begs the question: Why are the names of some geographic locations preceded by “the” and others not?

Rivers - THE Bronx River, THE Rio Grande, THE Nile; but not creeks, streams, springs, etc. - Sandy Creek, Comanche Springs.

Large bodies of salt water - THE Pacific Ocean, THE Gulf of Mexico; but Hudson Bay, Pirate’s Cove.

Large and small bodies of fresh water (no THE) - Lake Superior, Inks Lake, Walden Pond.

Mountain Ranges - THE Rocky Mountains, THE Alps; but not mountains - Pike’s Peak, Mt. Everest.

Towns, counties, states, countries, continents - Austin, Travis County, Texas, The United States of America (OK, this is an exception), North America.

It looks like the general rule is that the larger areas get prefixed with “the” while the smaller ones don’t. What I find especially strange about all of this is that even though there appears to be some kind of lexical rule about this, it is never taught ( as far as I can tell) yet no one ever seems to violate it. No one ever says, “I went swimming in Pacific Ocean” or “I went fishing in THE Deer Creek.”

2

Always a “the” on “of” constructions, I think.

And, I think, always a “the” when the feature is prominent enough to be named without a feature type. “The Mississippi [River]”, “The Pacific [Ocean]”, etc., even retaining the “the” when the feature type is present.

And, if Cecil’s account is entirely exact, then the Bronx River had achieved that kind of prominence at the time its name was attached to the Annexed District.

3

One wonders about things in the US, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, the Ivory Coast, the UK and the UAE all of which have some sort of pattern to them: there’s a generic name prefixed by some description. But what about the Ukraine and the Sudan?

4

And what’s the deal with The Hague? =)

Interesting that all rivers take “The”. I tried to come up with one that doesn’t and failed.
Powers &8^]

5

I don’t know about the Sudan, but “the Ukraine” is a Russian use (the word literally means “frontier”) that Ukrainians never liked when they were being ruled by Moscow, and are trying to abolish now.

6

My Russian isn’t that great, and it’s been a long time, but I don’t think that’s right. The article doesn’t exist in Russian - the word is just "

7

Sorry, turns out my iPhone won’t let me use Cyrillic in this app. I was trying to say that the Russian term would just be “Ukraina”.

Anyone else use Cyrillic in Tapatalk?

8

Most archipelagos also get the definite article: the Philippines, the Maldives, the Bahamas, the Falklands. Others do fine without it: Guadeloupe, Hawaii, Indonesia, Tonga.

9

With archipeligoes I think that’s because they are usually “The ____ Islands”. You know those islands–what were their names again…Oh yes, the Philippines. Those were the ones. By contrast, Indonesia and Hawaii are the names of political entities also, and their “island” names are slightly different–East Indies and Hawaiian Islands.

10

Most of the archipelagos you now know by article-free names have previously been referenced the other way–“the Japans,” and so forth.

11

The proper pronunciation of the New York City Borough is, ‘Duh Bronx’.

12

I’m not sure there is a definitive answer. “That’s just the way it’s done.” I know, that’s highly unsatisfying. We’d like there to be some rational pattern to explain it.

I think John W. Kennedy has spotted one element with respect to items that are known without their feature type. Rio Grande is, for instance, an interesting case because it is an English absorbtion of a Spanish name, so the word “Rio” was not commonly understood. Thus you get “the Rio Grande River” (Ree-oh Grand, not Ree-oh Gran-day), truncated to “the Rio Grande”.

I was going to comment with respect to mountain ranges vs mountains, that specific mountains are specific things (Mount St. Helens, Mount Everest), whereas mountain ranges are collective things (the Himalayas, the Rocky Mountains). But that doesn’t carry over to the water examples. I still think this is a strong part of the explanation. When we take a name as a collective name, we describe it with “the” whatevers. When we take a name as a specific entity, we drop the “the”. But that just raises the question of why we take some things as collectives and others as specifics.

Wiki says that the etymology is unclear.

It also says the “The Ukraine” formation is an English formulation. Perhaps it was a translating error that became ingrained early and carried through as a common practice.

Here is wiki’s cite on usage (footnote 8):
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/ukraine.html

13

With most place names affixed with ‘the,’ you can look back and ask if it’s a plural (inc. federalised countries), a desert, mountain range, river, sea or ocean.

Plural countries always have ‘the’ in front of them.

So do Republics, Kingdoms, Federations, etc - there’s plurality in there to start with. This only applies when they’re said with the united, republic etc bit included in the name; you say ‘Ireland’ but you also say ‘the Republic of Ireland’ and ‘the Irish Republic.’

Rivers, oceans, seas, deserts, and mountain ranges always take ‘the.’ Creeks don’t and neither do lakes. The ‘logic,’ such as it is, is that a hill, creek or lake are discreet entities, whereas rivers, mountains, seas and oceans are comprised of many smaller parts. Sometimes places are named after those geographical entities; they don’t always keep the definite article in their names, but if they do, the origin of their name is why.

That probably explains the Bronx. There are quite a few places named after rivers or mountain ranges that have lost their article over time, but I guess with the Bronx it stuck because a) it started off as an informal name, not something written down officially, and b) it kinda sounds like a plural.

Note that I’m not saying ‘this is right and proper and always should be so,’ just that this is the usual pattern for English language place-naming (and that’s because of the usual pattern of English article usage, but that’s too much to go in to now).

I don’t know why the Ukraine is called such - probably because of some geographical feature. Google is being very unhelpful here, because every supposed cite is politically loaded - I’m surprised at how many people think adding ‘the’ somehow denigrates the country.

14

I think the article explains this. It was the place belonging to Jonas Bronck and the Bronck family, thus it was “the Broncks’.”