User:Popcornfud/Thoughts on definite articles in names

The question of whether to write "The Beatles" (uppercase T) or "the Beatles" (lowercase t) was one of Wikipedia's longest and ugliest battles. It was even covered by the Wall Street Journal. Apparently the argument became so steamed that, following the result, editors had to be "strongly urged not to retire or threaten to retire" from Wikipedia.

The argument came down on the right side: "the Beatles", lowercase t. But in my view it didn't go far enough, and I think it has implications for how we ought to treat the definite article in names generally, not just for band names.

Definite articles

Many proper nouns in English use the definite article ("the"). For example:

• the White House
• the Élysée Palace
• the Eiffel Tower
• the New York Rangers
• the CIA

But many don't:

• Bush House
• Buckingham Palace
• Tokyo Tower
• Glasgow Rangers
• NASA

Sometimes there's no logic to this. It's just the way things are done — decided by common use. That's it.

The same goes for band names. Some use definite articles, and some don't:

• the Beatles
• Nirvana
• the Who
• Led Zeppelin

Sometimes whether band names use "the" doesn't settle, as with (the) Beastie Boys, (the) Smashing Pumpkins, (the) Pixies, (the) Foo Fighters, (the) Red Hot Chili Peppers and (the) Dixie Chicks. This is usually because official materials (such as album covers, merchandise, websites, marketing materials etc) or the band members themselves are inconsistent in usage.

In a 2020 interview, (the) Beastie Boys expressed irritation that people often use "the" with their name:

Diamond: It bugs the shit out of us. All the time, people are like [does annoying squeaky voice] "the Beastie Boys". There's no "the" in the band name!

Horovitz: Would you say "the Mudhoney"? "The Nirvana"?

Diamond: You don't say "the Run DMC". "The Funkadelic."

Unfortunately for Diamond and Horovitz, they have only themselves to blame. They set the precedent with their smash hit "Fight For Your Right" with the lines: "Your mom busted in and said, what's that noise? / Aw, mom you're just jealous it's the Beastie Boys." (And, as of 2024, they were still referring to themselves as "the Beastie Boys" in interviews, probably without noticing.)

There may be a linguistic explanation as to why we're inclined to add "the" to some band names but not others. English speakers tend to add articles to names containing plural countable nouns (such as boys, pumpkins, pixies, fighters, peppers and chicks). This seems to occur far less often with uncountable or singular nouns — as the Beastie Boys observed, no one is tempted to say "the Nirvana" .

The point is this

In the words of Wikipedia's proper noun article: When the comes at the start of a proper name, as in the White House, it is not normally capitalized unless it is a formal part of a title.

This is normal. No copyeditor worth their style guide would dream, mid-sentence, of writing "The USA" or "The Eiffel Tower" with an uppercase The. You just don't capitalize definite articles before proper nouns in the middle of a sentence.

Why should band names be the exception?

But the "the" is part of the name

If you think "the" should be considered part of the noun, do you also think it should be considered part of the Statue of Liberty, the White House and the New York Rangers? ("The" is never capitalized for any of these things, in any style guide.) How about common nouns like "the car" and "the cat" and "the sandwich"? Why should band names be different from all these things?

Articles are just grammatical elements used with nouns. They're not parts of the noun. "The" is no more part of the noun Beatles in the sentence "I listen to the Beatles" than it is in the noun sandwich in the sentence "I ate the sandwich".

If you disagree, then you're treating band names differently from any other proper noun in English. Why?

But the band should decide

OK, let's follow this logic. Let's try to find out what every band thinks on this subject, and do what they want us to do.

Problem 1: This would be the most complicated possible solution — it means every band name has to be checked and capitalized (or not) accordingly.

Problem 2: Discovering what bands "want us to do" here is impossible. Bands do not typically have sections on their website, marketing materials or press releases mandating a capitalized or lowercase definite article.

Can't we just copy what the band wrote on their album cover / website / T-shirt / poster / whatever? No, we can't, because bands themselves are often hopelessly inconsistent. To quote the result of the Beatles debate on Wikipedia:

The evidence demonstrates that t/The Beatles were themselves inconsistent about whether to capitalize the "T", and t/The Beatles' record companies were and are inconsistent about whether to capitalize the "t", and t/The Beatles' biographers were and are inconsistent about whether to capitalize the "T", and so on and so forth.

Look again at the Beastie Boys example above — they insist their name does not use the definite article, but repeatedly use it themselves in interviews and their own song lyrics. I once watched a talk by Fatboy Slim in which he wrote his name on the whiteboard as "Fat Boy Slim". As counter-intuitive as it may seem, bands are not necessarily reliable sources for their own names.

Problem 3: Even if a band consistently uses a lowercase or uppercase "the", it likely isn't the result of a conscious decision. Sometimes musicians incorporate stylizations on purpose, to create a certain effect, but sometimes they do it without consideration, because they're musicians, not copyeditors.

For example, the Traveling Wilburys song "End of the Line" is written "End Of The Line" both on the album packaging and on streaming platforms. Was this an intentional stylization, done for effect? Of course not. Someone involved didn't understand the convention for proper nouns in English, and even if the error was noticed probably no one cared. (My God, can you imagine what kind of loser would care about this sort of thing?)

Problem 4: Even if we could establish the capitalization preferences of every band in the world, inevitably some would capitalize "the" and some would not. Reflecting these preferences would result in inconsistent prose, sometimes in the same sentence: "Influential bands of the 20th century include The Beatles, the Smiths, The Pixies, the Rolling Stones and The Red Hot Chili Peppers." To the reader there would be no apparent logic motivating this — it would just look like we were crappy writers.

Problem 5: If we do this for bands, are we also going to do it for the names of companies, universities, restaurants, organizations and all other entities? If so, all of the problems above apply for them too. If not, why are we only going to do this with bands? (Why are people so obsessed with doing this only for band names?)

So, no: the band should get to decide how they write their name on their album and website and T-shirt, but not on Wikipedia, which should follow logical, consistent patterns of English.

I still think band names are different for some reason and "the Beatles" lowercase looks weird to me

You'll get used to it.

The exception: titles of works

Titles of books, works of art, songs etc don't fall under this logic. It's The Lord of the Rings, not the Lord of the Rings.

Titles follow different conventions. For example, titles of works are italicised or encased in quotation marks by many publications (including Wikipedia). The Simpsons is the TV show; the Simpsons are the characters.

Band names do not full under this umbrella. They're just ordinary proper nouns, just like the names of sports teams, or universities, or restaurants, or countries.

Implications

• The name of the Beatles Wikipedia article should be Beatles, not The Beatles (just as it's White House, not The White House). We already do this for some articles, but it's inconsistent. For example, we have an article named Spice Girls (even though the Spice Girls always use the definite article), but another article named The Rolling Stones.
• In cases where disambiguation is required in article titles (such as with the Who), I don't care if we go with "Who (band)" or "The Who".
• We should exclude "the" from wikilinks; eg the Beatles, not the Beatles (just as we wikilink the White House, not the White House).
• We should exclude "the" from bolded names — ie, the Beatles, not the Beatles (just as we bold the White House, not the White House).
• All of the above goes for other institutions, such as companies (the Coca-Cola Company), newspapers (the New York Times), restaurants (the Fat Duck) and hotels (the Hilton). (This is already partly covered in the MOS:INSTITUTIONS guideline.)

Of course, getting consensus for these proposals and renaming thousands of articles would be a lifetime's work. So I'm complaining about it in this essay instead.

And yes

All this also applies to the band the The.