Use of the indefinite article before proper names

Use of the definite article before proper names

§ 200. The definite article is necessary:

1. When additional specification is needed. This is realized with a restricting attribute, usually formed as an of-phraseor a clause, or with the definite article alone, or a premodifier operating as one:

Gloria at twenty-six was still the Gloria of twenty.

Did Bait understand the England of today?

That’s not the George Lamb I knew.

“You are the Mr Murdstone who married the widow of my late nephew?” said my aunt.

“Why, she’s Sue Courtenay,” Gladys informed her uncle impressively.

“ The Sue Courtenay! Why, don’t you know her?”

“Cap’n Kit, that’s my name.” “What? The Captain Kit? O’course I’ve heard of him.”

2. When the specifying premodifier denotes a profession or points out some peculiar feature or temporary state (often expressed by a participle): the playwright Pinter, the painter Reynolds, the electrician Smith, the unsophisticated Kitty, the susceptible Mr Snodgrass, the puzzled Henry, the calculating Becky, the brilliant George Osborne, the offended Soames.

3. Before a group of objects or persons bearing the same name and forming one whole: The Pennines, the Alps, the Rockies, the Urals - a group of mountains, a mountain range; the British Isles, the Philippines, the Canaries, the Hebrides, the Shetlands - a group of islands, an archipelago; the Browns, theTullivers - a family, a clan, as in: the Dobsons were a very respectable family indeed.

The absence of the article before a plural proper name suggests a mere plurality, as in: There are a lot of Wilsons, Browns and Smiths in England.

4. Before proper nouns formed by means of substantivized adjectives: the Pacific (ocean), the Atlantic (ocean), the Mediterranean (Sea), the Argentine (Republic), but Argentina (because it is a proper name).

5. Before nicknames: the Gadfly, the Scout.

§ 201. The indefinite article is necessary:

1. When the person mentioned belongs to the family bearing the same name:

Mrs Tulliver had been a Miss Dodson...

No daughter of the house could be indifferent of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a

Watson.

2. When nothing is known about the person mentioned but the name.

This usage corresponds to the Russian word «некий».

There’s a young American girl staying at the hotel. She’s a Miss Render.

3. When an originally proper name comes to be used as a common noun (usually as a result of metonymy or metaphor), as in:

This man doesn’t know a Rubens from a Rembrandt (pictures of these painters).

There is in Gary’s work the naturalness and zest of a Defoe, the generosity of a Fielding (like that of

Defoe, like that of Fielding).

Everybody isn’t a Mary Pickford (a film star like Mary Pickfbrd).

He was a Crusoe with no need to look for footprints in the sand (a man like Crusoe).

‘Have a cigar.’ ‘If it is a real Havana.’

4. When some phase, aspect, or state ismeant, whether it refers to a living being or a geographical place:

John was inside, a very different John from the lad he had known seven years ago.

And now here was Gulliver’s girl Barbara, that mournful-eyed waif from an unhappy France.

So at night Castle dreamt of a South Africa reconstructed with hatred.

(Compare with the same use of the indefinite article before unique and non-count nouns.)

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