We don’t refer to the borough of Queens as “The Queens”. Why do we refer to the borough of the Bronx as “The Bronx” and not just “Bronx”?
For the same reason we refer to the city in The Netherlands as The Hague: Crazy Dutch People.
Why are you looking for consistency?
The Bronx was named because much of the land was owned by the Bronck family. People referred to the area as “The Bronck’s” land. It later turned into “The Bronx.”
Queens was named as “Queen’s County” by the British. If there was a “the,” it was dropped. People back then didn’t have problems if things weren’t entirely consistent.
I wasn’t looking for consistency, I was just using the Queens example as a way to explain my question.
The Bronx County Historical Society’s webpage.
Actually, turns out Jonas Bronck was a Swede. The Bronx River (I believe “x” is the possessive in Dutch?), the only actual true river in NYC (the big ones are really estuaries) was named after him and the region was named after the river. At least that’s one of the latest theories.
My grandparents, who grew up in Harlem when it still had lots of Irish, used to take the IRT up to Woodlawn, the cemetery which later gave its name to my neighborhood. Then they took a trolley through rural woodlands to Yonkers. There are pictures of farms in my neighborhood throughout the 1910s, but expansion down from Westchester and up from the el train changed all that.
Washington rode down my street, on his way to the Battle of White Plains. There was a Revolutionary War skirmish across the street wherein 17 Stockbridge Christian Indians were killed by the British. MetroNorth uses a viaduct built in 1841 down to Grand Central. Nellie Bly, Duke Ellington, Joseph Pulitzer, Celia Cruz, and Frank Woolworth, to name a few, are buried nearby. I have trees that are eight stories tall and 100 years old I can see from my window. Viva el Bronx.
OT but relevent. A radio ad for a Seattle area new car dealer refers to “the 405 freeway” and “the 90 freeway”. I don’t know of anyone in the Seattle area that refers to those interstate freeways that way. Usually they are referred as I-405 or I-90. I figured it was a New York ad agency that made the commercials.
Perhaps you mean a Los Angeles ad agency? Highways in the New York area (and the Northeast US in general, as far as I’ve noticed), do not take the definite article. Sometimes they’re “Route whatever,” but usually it’s just the unadorned number. The big interstate running directly west from NYC, for example, is “Eighty” in common reference.
“The” as an integral part of a name is used inconsistently in English, usually to identify one particular unique-to-its-kind entity or the form of that entity par excellence, the one against which others of the same type are measured. It can also, as in “The Bronx,” derive from a clipping of a longer form where the “the” is consistent with English usage: “The Bronx” derives from “The Broncks’ lands/farm.”
The two wide straits (oxymoron alert!) between mainland Scotland and the Hebrides (another clipping example – from “The Hebrides Islands”) are “The Minch” and “North Minch.” The English Channel, The Weald, etc., are unique entities.
Streets and roads take “the” when there is a specialness or uniqueness to them, though not always (e.g., Broadway). But Kansas City has The Paseo, The Mall is the focus of D.C. as national capital, it’s circled by The Beltway (as is central Raleigh by I-440, The Beltline).
“The ##” for highways where a naked number fills the gap is one of those spattered regionalisms – “Eighty-one” is the Interstate highway that crosses Upstate New York north to south, and at Mattydale north of Syracuse intersects “Ninety” which is “The Thruway.” (Nobody outside the Thruway Authority and state DOT ever mentions the fact that it’s legally named after Thomas E. Dewey.) But 81 crosses the Thousand Islands Bridge and joins with “The Four Oh One” in Canada. And the article is as firmly affixed to the superhighway route number north of the St. Lawrence as it is invariably omitted south of it. I gather there are parts of California, and a few other U.S. places, where “the ##” is standard for identifying a main highway. And my possibly incorrect impression is that England tends to refer to its main routes as “the M-1” etc.
[QUOTE=Polycarp"The ##" for highways where a naked number fills the gap is one of those spattered regionalisms [/QUOTE]
I think this usage is spreading and becoming the norm, if we include the “I-##” variant sans article. It’s definitely true that in L.A., people usually used to say ‘the Ventura Freeway’, ‘the Century Freeway’, etc., but now it’s more common to hear ‘the 134’ and ‘the 105’.
I’m guessing that the ‘I-##’ form is more common in the upper Midwest; all the Internet references to Wisconsin’s much loved and much detested Gobbler Motel say it was “off I-94”.
That’s correct - and not only main routes, but any numbered or generically-named road (“the B4522”, “the North Circular” etc). Some named roads such as “Strand” consistently acquire a capitalised ‘The’. Others take it in lower case. Yet more, such as Kingsway and Whitehall, never take it. There’s no consistency.
(There was a thread on this a while ago, if anybody’s interested enough to search for it…)
Those are distinct Southern Californianisms with the reference to the freeways. The names of freeways in Southern California such as “The San Diego” or “The Harbor” has really dropped and the numbers preceded by “the” have taken over.
Cecil Adams on The Bronx.
Quick by-the-way: “The Ukraine” is the steppe area north of the Black Sea; “Ukraine,” without the article, is the nation that occupies most of it. Ukrainians are quite particular about this, because “The Ukraine” was a Russian-centric usage. This is speaking of English usage; with the absence of the definite article in both languages, I’m not sure how that applied in their native tongues, but I’m given to understand that they are quite particular about the distinction.
When using it in a mailing address, however, you just put “Bronx, NY”, like Queens, NY (although I guess there you can specify an area within Queens ??).
Sure you can, if you have no class. 
No, just kidding, it’ll get delivered and it’s perfectly legal and adequate. But the convention is to use the article if you have space and time. On the subway, the small sign on the train will say “Norwood, Bronx” for a destination but “Manhattan and The Bronx” on the large station signs. Everyone uses the term “the Bronx” (or “el Bronx” for most of my fellow boroughites) even in the most casual conversation.
‘DA’ Bronx.
Say it with me, people.
Sheesh.
Which Bronk do you live in, Mehitabel?
Well, we say it more like “dah Bronx” round here.
The Bronx is only about 14% white but my neighborhood is a little enclave of mostly Irish and Italians, although across Bronx River Road is a more typical predominantly Black middle-class one.
We were in the paper of record the other day! I’m about a seven-minute walk from that mural, and the main street of my neighborhood has about 12 Irish bars on it and all the markets sell Irish imported foods (shrimp chips, anyone? :eek:)
Shrimp chips??? Irish??? (Maybe it’s the scrapings from the floor that don’t fulfil EU health regulations?)
However, just a few hours west, Buffalonians do refer to it as “the 90.” Not sure how far this extends.
My two theories:
- Proximity to Canada
- NY Thruway is a toll road until you get to the Buffalo area, whereupon it becomes a normal freeway. Perhaps contrary to the official view, locals don’t consider the free part of I-90 to be part of the Thruway.