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 New York Rangers

But many don't:

• Bush House
• Buckingham Palace
• Glasgow Rangers

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

Again, this tends to be determined by common use. Usually the precedent is set by the band – they're the first people to use the name, after all – and everyone goes from there.

Sometimes common use doesn't settle on one solution. In a 2020 interview, (the) Beastie Boys expressed irritation that people often use the definite article 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 may have 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."

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

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.

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

Not really. 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".

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: Discovering what bands "want us to do" here is impossible. Bands do not typically have a section on their website mandating capitalization.

You might ask: "Can't we just copy what the band wrote on their album cover / website / T-shirt / poster / whatever?" Unfortunately, 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.

Even if bands were consistent, they might not have ever thought about it. Musicians don't spend a lot of time worrying about this sort of thing, and may incorporate all kinds of weird and wonderful stylizations into their names and titles. Sometimes they do it on purpose, to create a certain effect, but sometimes they do it without consideration, because they're musicians, not punctuation buffs.

Problem 2: Even if we could establish the capitalization preferences of every band in the world with confidence, inevitably some would capitalize "the" and some would not. Reflecting these preferences would result in inconsistent prose, sometimes in the same sentence. ("So-and-so cited the Smiths, The Pixies, the Rolling Stones and The Red Hot Chili Peppers as influences.") This creates a sloppy effect, and to the reader there would be no apparent logic behind it — it would just look weird.

Problem 3: If we do this for bands, are we also going to do it for companies, universities, restaurants, organizations and all other institutions and entities? Are we going to carefully check whether the official Statue of Liberty website writes "The Statue of Liberty" or "the Statue of Liberty", and then meticulously follow only that guidance (assuming it isn't hopelessly inconsistent anyway), ignoring all other reliable sources? 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.

The exception: titles of works

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

Why? Because titles aren't ordinary proper nouns like "White House", and follow their own conventions – for example, titles of works are italicised or encased in quotation marks by many publications (including Wikipedia). Band names do not full under this umbrella. They're ordinary proper nouns, just like the names of sports teams or universities or anything else.

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).
• When we put names in quotation marks for whatever reason, we should exclude the definite article. For example, Michael Jackson was known as the King of Pop, not the King of Pop.
• 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.