The Use of Articles with Proper Nouns

專有名詞(proper nouns) 前需不需要用the 真是需要記住：



Do not use THE before: 
• Continents, countries, cities: Europe, Africa, Italy, France, Mexico, Bolivia, London, Miami;
Exceptions: the Netherlands, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines
• Names of streets: Fifth Avenue, Washington Blvd., Main St., Sheppard Rd., Broadway
• Names of lakes, bays and falls: Lake Titicaca, Lake Macbride, Lake Geneva, Niagara Falls
Exception: a group of lakes like the Great Lakes, and the Lake of Constance, the Lake of Lucerne
• Names of single mountains: Mount Everest, Bear Mountain
Exception: ranges of mountains like the Andes or the Rockies or unusual names like the
Matterhorn
• Names of islands: Coney Island, Key West, Long Island
Exception: island chains like the Hawaiian Islands, the Hebrides, or the Canary Islands
• Names of languages and nationalities: Chinese, English, Spanish, Russian
• Names of academic subjects: mathematics, biology, history, computer science （科目前不用the!)
• Names of Universities: Yale University, Columbia University, Oxford University
Exception: of-forms the University of Michigan, the University of Hawaii

Use THE before: 
• Names of all bodies of water (except lakes, bays and falls): the Nile, the Pacific, the
Mediterranean Sea, the English Channel, the Gulf of Mexico, the Straight of Gibraltar…
• Deserts, forests, peninsulas and archipelagos: the Sahara, the Black Forest, the Iberian
Peninsula, the Malay Archipelago
• Points on the globe: the Equator, the North Pole
• Names of geographical areas: the Middle East, the West , the Near East
• Names composed on common nouns plus proper nouns: the Dominion of Canada, the New
York City, the United States
• Names of buildings, hotels, libraries: The Empire State Building, the Niagara Falls Hotel, the
Metropolitan museum, the Library of Congress
• Names of theories, effects, devices, scales, and so on modified by a proper noun used as an
adjective: the Doppler effect, the Hubble telescope, the Kelvin scale.
But: when a proper noun is used in possessive form, no article is used: Eistein’s theory of relativity,
Broca’s area, Wegener’s hypothesis…