Why don't we use " the" before "Big Ben"? There is a sentence in my text book, "we are all together on the London Eye", another sentence "That's Big Ben". I was told that I didn't have to add " the" b

Wendy

Why don't we use " the" before "Big Ben"? There is a sentence in my text book, "we are all together on the London Eye", another sentence "That's Big Ben". I was told that I didn't have to add " the" before proper noun, but why there is "the" before "London Eye", but no "the" before "Big Ben"? Who can tell me, thanks!

Oct 30, 2013 2:19 AM

Answers · 9

That's an interesting question. I think that it is because 'Ben' is a proper noun, whereas 'eye' is not. You ignore the qualifiers before. Although - if those qualifiers are proper names, then you don't use 'the' either... e.g. St Paul's cathedral.

October 30, 2013

Big Ben is just a nickname for the original name of The Elizabeth Tower. We use the article "the" before the names of buildings, bodies of water, and a few other proper nouns. Here is an article to help clarify when to use "the" and when not to, hope this helps. http://www.yale.edu/graduateschool/writing/forms/The%20Use%20of%20Articles%20with%20Proper%20Nouns.pdf

October 30, 2013

If I ask the question: where are you going? You could answer "To the United States" or "To America"; "To the United Kingdom" or "To Britain"; "To the Eiffel Tower" or "To Paris". I think the rule is this: only if the name has a common noun (such as "states", "kingdom", "tower", "ocean", "river", etc) then it will be preceded by "the". You may ask ... what about "The Atlantic" or "The Amazon", etc. Well, I think those are just shortened forms of "The Atlantic Ocean" and "The Amazon River". So, "the" is required if the name has a common noun, even if the common noun is dropped/omitted.

November 1, 2013