10

When do I use 'of' before a name of a town, commune, river etc. ?

I'm lookin for American English if that makes a difference. I don't find the rule and I am unsure about the following cases:

  1. The river receives treated wastewater from the town [of?] Villeneuve-de-Berg.
  2. The study area encompasses the communes [of?] Mirabel and Berzème.

I wouldn't put 'of' before the name in the following sentence, although in theory it seems to be the same construction:

The river 'of' Thames flows through London.

Is there any general rule?

Tanner Swett
  • 5,822
  • 15
  • 27
NicoH
  • 225
  • 1
  • 5
  • The rule here is only one question per question. Your Thames question makes it two. I don't much like the river receives there. I would do: Treated wastewater from Villeneuve-de-Berg town flows into the river. The river receives is La rivière reçoit, right? – Lambie May 24 '23 at 17:31
  • 1
    Your logic is incorrect. It would not be "the river of Thames", it would be "the River Thames of London" or "London's River Thames". The last of these sounds perfectly normal. – chasly - supports Monica May 24 '23 at 21:06
  • 1
    I was trying to get a general answer for "the [X] of [name]" // "the [X] [name]" with 'X' describing the category, this named something belongs to (town, river, mountain, island, ...). I was hoping for a general rule, but looks like there is no general rule and this question might be too large. – NicoH May 25 '23 at 14:15
  • I thought your question was about communes and towns? The river thing came at the end. I did wastewater treatment texts from French for years and years. You should restructure your question. Geography in English is more complicated than French. The river receives wastewater from x: Cela suinte la traduction..... – Lambie May 25 '23 at 17:17
  • If you said 'river of Thames flows through London' out loud, my first thought would be large number of people named 'Tim' in a large procession or some sort. – JimmyJames May 25 '23 at 17:22
  • https://water.europa.eu/freshwater/countries/uwwt/france The river discharges wastewater into x, not the river receives. – Lambie May 25 '23 at 17:28
  • 1
    @JimmyJames I don't know where you're from, but in my part of the US at least, "Thames" sounds more like "tems" than "tims". Interesting. – Shawn V. Wilson May 25 '23 at 17:55
  • 1
    @ShawnV.Wilson - It's pronounced like Tems in the UK. If I heard someone call it the "Tims", I would think they were from New Zealand. the land where pen sounds like pin, and where deck sounds like something rude. LOL. – Billy Kerr May 25 '23 at 17:59
  • @ShawnV.Wilson My wife tells me I pronounce 'pin' and 'pen' the same so it's probably me. The area where I grew up has a fairly unique accent. – JimmyJames May 25 '23 at 18:38
  • The River Thames and other British rivers (e.g. Mersey, Severn, Dee, Forth) are kind of an unusual case. I'm not aware of any rivers anywhere else that are referred to in this way in English. Usually it's the name before the word "river", e.g. it's the Amazon River, not the River Amazon. Likewise for the Mississippi, Nile, Yellow, Euphrates, etc. There's some other odd ones, like I've never heard the Danube called the "Danube River", it's usually just the Danube, or often "Blue Danube" in reference to the waltz. – Darrel Hoffman May 25 '23 at 19:09

6 Answers6

18

Gotube's answer is good, but I think there is more to say.

It's a matter of whether the classification (River, Bay etc) is felt to be part of the name or not.

As Gotube says, rivers, lakes, mountains never (or hardly ever) take "of".

Most other kinds of place usually do, but again, it depends on what the name is. "Crete" is the (English) name of a Greek island: we can refer to is as just "Crete". It would be very unusual to say "Crete Island", but more normal to say "the island of Crete".

On the other hand "Baffin Island" is the name of an island in Canada: the locals may call it just "Baffin", but generally its name is "Baffin Island", not "Baffin" or "the island of Baffin".

If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_the_British_Isles, you'll see that the majority are listed with just a name (so we would say "the island of X" to refer to them with more precision), but a substantial minority are given with "X Island" or "Isle of X".

With bays, it's even more noticeable: gotube gave an example of "the Bay of Fundy", but if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bays_of_the_United_States, the great majority are listed as "X Bay".

Colin Fine
  • 75,266
  • 4
  • 98
  • 158
  • Bays: Baffin Bay, Guanabara Bay. Cape Cod Bay, to name just a few. The problem is not whether most are x or y, the problem is getting it right. I don't think it is a good idea to deal with all geography issues here and the OP has asked two different questions. – Lambie May 24 '23 at 15:43
  • There's the River of Jordan. Perhaps the "of" was just to fit the meter of the song, or perhaps because it's to disambiguate from other geographical entities called Jordan. And if we go into foreign languages, there's Rio de Janeiro. – Michael Kay May 25 '23 at 17:30
  • @MichaelKay As far as I can tell, that's only used in the song. The actual river is (according to Wikipedia) known in English as either the River Jordan or the Jordan River (the former sounds more like UK usage to me, and the latter US usage). – Steve Melnikoff May 26 '23 at 15:05
  • All those upvotes and not one mention of towns or communes in France. – Lambie Jul 09 '23 at 18:47
16

Villeneuve-de-Berg, Mirabel and Berzème are all settlement place names. If you want to refer to settlements as communities, towns, etc. before the name, then you use "the X of".

The Thames, however, is a river, and if you want to put the word "river" in front of river names, there's no "of": The River Thames.

Most types of places take "of" before the place name, but there's an arbitrary list of types of places that don't. Here's a probably incomplete list with examples:

rivers (the River Thames)
lakes (Lake Titicaca)
mountains (Mount Everest)

Most other types of places take "of" before the place name:
The City of Toronto
The Bay of Fundy
The Republic of Korea

gotube
  • 49,596
  • 7
  • 72
  • 154
  • It's also used with names of people, such as John of Gaunt, where "Gaunt" means the city of Ghent. This is to distinguish him for other people named John. There are many historical examples. Likewise, a modern use would be something like, "John Smith of Hoboken purchased a 5th Avenue apartment yesterday," but this use is becoming rare. – Wastrel May 24 '23 at 14:04
  • In "Bay of Fundy", "Bay of" is part of its name. – Barmar May 24 '23 at 14:10
  • The word settlement is wrong; two are communes and one is a town. And this is wrong: Most other types of places take "of" before the place name: The Hudson River, Baffin Bay, Guanabara Bay. It's best not to cover every case because many are idiomatic and only that. – Lambie May 24 '23 at 15:39
  • @Lambie I was only talking about when you put the type of place "before the place name". I didn't say it was true for all place names. – gotube May 25 '23 at 00:12
  • The Plains of Abraham, the Cliffs of Despair, the Mountains of Madness... – Michael Lorton May 25 '23 at 00:50
  • @MichaelLorton I intentionally left out Fantasy locations, as they seem to use "The X of Y" in places where no real places do. Google, "The Forest of" and you'll get nothing but Fantasy locations. – gotube May 25 '23 at 06:18
  • 4
    @gotube I'm pretty sure "The Forest of Dean" isn't a fantasy, as are a few others in the UK (Essex, Arden, Mercia, Marston Vale, Avon, Ae); mostly these reflect a forest that was created within an existing geographic entity. Also The Cliffs of Moher/Dover and the Mountains of Mourne both are real. If there is a rule, you'd need to know all of the history and geography of the area to apply it. – Pete Kirkham May 25 '23 at 11:08
  • @gotube — I was mostly kidding, but there are the forest examples Pete Kirkham mentions, and of course the Cliffs of Dover. There do not seem to be any real-life “Mountains of” anything but the Plains of Abraham are real, as are the islets of Langerhans — though those are somewhat different cases. – Michael Lorton May 25 '23 at 16:02
  • There are two separate questions here. We should not be answering the one about rivers. It would take pages and pages of stuff. Let's stop, huh? – Lambie May 25 '23 at 16:51
  • @PeteKirkham Thanks! I'd never heard of the Forest of Dean. I would have included that, but I think three is enough now. – gotube May 25 '23 at 16:59
4

With place names there are patterns, but there is no consistency and there are no rules. See for example https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/69657/when-to-put-river-before-or-after-its-name-and-why for discussion of whether "River" and "Mount" come before or after the proper name.

"of" is sometimes used for disambiguation: the State of New York versus the City of New York, the City of London versus Greater London. The Borough of Reading has different boundaries from the Diocese of Reading.

"City of Westminster" and "City of York" are common; yet for some reason it's "County of Devon" but "County Durham".

I've never heard "River of Thames", but "Waters of Tyne" is a well-known folk song; and we have the "Isle of Man" and the "Isle of Wight", whereas Scilly can be either the "Isles of Scilly" or the "Scilly Isles".

There's no rule.

Michael Kay
  • 1,387
  • 7
  • 7
  • The is also the state of New York. When there is a cap, it's very formal. – Lambie May 24 '23 at 16:23
  • And to confuse the matter even more, there's a place called "King of Prussia" in Pennsylvania. – JimmyJames May 25 '23 at 17:26
  • Yes, this. Don't look for grammatical rules in place names, because names don't come from grammarians, they come from common usage, and the people commonly use them don't care that the name they're using is inconsistent with what other people might call their own place names. – Simon Geard May 26 '23 at 04:42
  • Note that "City of London" is an actual place name. While it does, as you say, avoid ambiguity with Greater London (or just London), the "City of" is in this instance a compulsory part of the name; this is not generally true of other cities. – Steve Melnikoff May 26 '23 at 16:03
4

It’s highly arbitrary. Native speakers like me can’t explain it, and several of us have already tried. On behalf of my ancestors, I apologize. I’m going to list a bunch of weird exceptions and corner cases, but before I do, here’s some practical advice: try searching Google or Google Books for both ways of saying it, and see if one is much more common than the other. There’s no simple rule, but that’s the fastest way to get an idea of how people talk.

For example, several of the answers say that of is “never” used with mountains, but there is at least one exception: most translations of Genesis 8:4 say, “the mountains of Ararat.” But some modern ones say, “the Ararat mountains.” (Unlike many grammatical quirks of English Bibles, this isn’t the result of an overly-literal word-for-word translation. There is no preposition before “Ararat” in the original Hebrew.)

Another answer that’s mostly-right says, “It's a matter of whether the classification (River, Bay etc) is felt to be part of the name or not.” However, the official website for Atlantic City says, “It’s a GREAT Day Here in The City of Atlantic City.” I admit, this sounds ridiculous to me, but a quick search shows many examples like “town of Levittown.”

In aristocratic titles, of is nearly always used in English (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Kingdom of Thailand, Principality of Monaco). This is consistent with “Ruler of Place” but less so with “Empire/Kingdom/Principality/Duchy/Whatever of Wherever.” Even German aristocratic names with zu or von und zu instead of von are normally either translated “of” or left untranslated.

The one rule that I truly can’t think of any exceptions to is: we only put of before a name that’s a noun, never one that’s an adjective. For example, either “the Sargasso Sea” or “the Sea of Sargasso,” or the “Sea of Japan,” but the names of most other seas and oceans are adjectives: Pacific, Mediterranean, Caspian, Antarctic. These are never preceded by of.

As for how it got that way? My best guess (I am not an expert) is that the English borrowed it from Latin.

Way, way back in prehistory, the Proto-Indo-European language, the ancestor of nearly all the languages of Europe, had suffixes for nouns that marked where or when things happened. (And observe that dates work similarly: we normally say “January fourth” or “January four,” but there is also a more formal construction, “the fourth of January.”) Today, we call that the locative case. Latin originally still used it, but by the time Rome became an empire (either the Roman Empire or the Empire of Rome, take your pick) these very old noun endings merged with others that happened to sound similar. For a lot of feminine singular names, that meant -ai turned into -ae, an ending that would often translate to of. (If an agricola is a farmer, agricolae could mean farmer’s or of the farmer.)

So, in the Bible verse I quoted above, which most English Bibles translate as “the mountains of Ararat,” the Latin version of the Bible that was used in England for centuries does use the -ae ending (“montes Armeniae”). Educated English-speakers often tried to imitate Latin grammar in the past. This matches the formality of the construction in English, its use for locations and dates, and that it only is used with nouns.

Unfortunately, like learning the history of why irregular plural nouns and past-tense verbs are the way they are, that won’t actually help you learn them.

Davislor
  • 8,459
  • 11
  • 42
  • 1
    There is a range of mountains in Northern Ireland called variously the Mountains of Mourne, the Mourne Mountains, and the Mournes. – Michael Harvey May 24 '23 at 20:31
  • There are various eminences in Ireland and Scotland called the Hill of Something such as the Hill of Tara in County Meath, the Hill of O'Neill in County Tyrone, and the Hill of Uisneach in County Westmeath (all in Ireland) and plenty more in Scotland. – Michael Harvey May 24 '23 at 21:51
  • @MichaelHarvey Perhaps J.R.R. Tolkien was thinking of them when he invented “the Mountains of Moria.” – Davislor May 24 '23 at 21:52
  • I now have an earworm, @MichaelHarvey. Don't be starting those fashions now, Mary McGee ... – TRiG May 25 '23 at 02:43
  • The main question here is NOT about rivers. It's about being able in English to put the town adjectivally before the type of district. A commune is a French administrative district, as it were. – Lambie May 25 '23 at 16:56
  • @Lambie That’s true, but did you mean to reply to another answer? I didn’t discuss rivers or communes. – Davislor May 25 '23 at 17:02
  • No, I'm saying the mod should not have allowed this entire discussion to veer off into what was a secondary question: a pissing match about rivers before or after the name. And, as an aside, I have to say that I don't much evidence of people who understand this kind of writing. I translated stuff about French wastewater for years and years. Know all about it. And know how to write the corresponding tech English for annual reports et alia. Sorry to go on about this but really I just needed to say it. Hope you don't mind... – Lambie May 25 '23 at 17:12
  • @Davislor re dates: your answer describes US usage. However, in the UK, we would say either "the fourth of July" or "July the fourth" only; the other examples are not in common usage in British English. – Steve Melnikoff May 26 '23 at 15:59
  • @SteveMelnikoff Thanks for the information! – Davislor May 26 '23 at 20:38
1

The word "of" is often used between a noun for a geographic location and the name of that location. I have no idea why that construction exists, but it does.

Examples include the isle of Manhattan, the country of Canada, the city of Detroit, the state of New Jersey, the continent of Antarctica, and the region of Bir Tawil.

The construction is occasionally used in ways that seem redundant. For example, there is no problem with saying "the city of Michigan City."

It seems like the construction isn't used with bodies of water. (The phrases "the Bay of Fundy" and "the Gulf of Mexico" are not examples of this construction, because the Bay of Fundy is never called just "Fundy" and the Gulf of Mexico is never called just "Mexico.") It doesn't seem to be used with mountains, either, probably because a mountain seems more like a geographic feature than a location.

Tanner Swett
  • 5,822
  • 15
  • 27
  • Except of course for the Mountains of Mourne, or the Mount of Olives. – Michael Kay May 24 '23 at 16:01
  • No one says the isle of Manhattan today. No one would the city of Michigan City except in some very specialized documents. Also, in AmE, we use New Jersey state, etc, too. – Lambie May 24 '23 at 16:23
  • @Lambie - When referring to the actions of a city government it is quite common to establish the distinction between the city and its government by saying The city of X. A phrase like, The city of Michigan City is saying no more dogs at the beach, makes perfect sense and would be a common thing to say. – EllieK May 24 '23 at 16:27
  • @Lambie "No one says the isle of Manhattan today." – Nobody except for Ben Gibbard in the song "Marching Bands of Manhattan," of course! As for the other examples, they sound pretty natural to me (a 30 year old American) if preceded by the words "the entire." Would you say things like "the entire state of New Jersey" and "the entire city of Michigan City" or would you say something else instead? – Tanner Swett May 24 '23 at 16:39
  • Sure, I am not saying we don't say state of x, I am saying something else. That we also use New York state, etc. It is not simple. – Lambie May 24 '23 at 16:44
  • @Lambie Ah, I misunderstood that part of your comment. – Tanner Swett May 24 '23 at 16:46
  • Marching Bands of Manhattan is a song, just like West Side Story has the song "I want to be in America": I like the island Manhattan. These are outliers.//No worries Tanner. Songs and poems are special categories, don't you agree? :) – Lambie May 24 '23 at 16:49
  • While the Gulf of Mexico is never called Mexico, there are Gulfs and Bays that people refer to simply as "the Gulf" or "the Bay", sometimes assuming wrongly that their audience knows exactly which one they mean. And of course here in England everyone knows what "The City" is. – Michael Kay May 25 '23 at 17:20
-7

Samples from the OP:

The river receives treated wastewater from the town [of?] Villeneuve-de-Berg. The study area encompasses the communes [of?] Mirabel and Berzème.

Not covering every aspect of place names and English. That said:

For those places, you can do: the Mirable and Berzème communes AND Ville-neuve-de-Berg town. No need for of here at all.

the River Thames, I'm told most rivers names in the UK, the Indus or Indus River and the Seine River or the River Seine or just the Seine and the Hudson River. Many rivers are added at the end and capitalized.

That's just the way it is.

With my versions:
The river receives treated wastewater from Villeneuve-de-Berg town.
The study area encompasses the Mirabel and Berzème communes.

Not covering every aspect of place names and English. Especially rivers. Because that is a separate questions.

In English, we say: X and Y counties, X and Y districts. **We are not obliged to use: the districts of X and Y. This is quite hard to google but grammatically it is done all the time. ERGO, X and Y communes works perfectly well. It's shorter.

Also, wastewater from Villeneuve-de-Berg OR wastewater from Villeneuve-de-Berg town are both acceptable in administrative-type texts. There is often no need to say town or city when using the name of one. You would use town to distinguish it from say, the suburbs of a city.

Lambie
  • 44,522
  • 4
  • 33
  • 88
  • 4
    I would prefer 'River Seine'. – Michael Harvey May 23 '23 at 20:41
  • 2
    'The Villeneuve-de-Berg town' sounds completely strange to me (British English, born in the 70s). Are there versions of English where that is a natural phrasing? And indeed I don't think the Thames is a special case. The vast majority of English rivers would take 'River' first for local speakers: River Tyne, River Tweed, River Tamar, etc. But the opposite pattern seems to hold for North America, Australia, New Zealand, ... – James Martin May 24 '23 at 09:38
  • "the town of X" and "the X town" are not interchangeable. If X is a well-known place name , one can simply use "X" without the detail. – Matthew Leingang May 24 '23 at 10:19
  • 1
    I live quite near the River Avon, more specifically the Bristol Avon to distinguish it from the Warwickshire Avon (and three others). Locals tend to just call it the Avon. I live very near [the] Horfield Brook, and I have from time to time found myself up the Swanee River (or just the Swanee), or Shit Creek. – Michael Harvey May 24 '23 at 12:13
  • @JamesMartin Just remove the "the": near Villeneuve-de-Berg town. And as for the majority of rivers, you are mistaken: the Hudson River, the Indus River [I misspelt it above], the Nile, the Amazon or Amazon River. I said I was not covering every case re rivers. The names of rivers depends on many things. – Lambie May 24 '23 at 15:31
  • @MichaelHarvey And I live near the Weir River Estuary, which we locals call the Weir. For every example you can give from the UK, we have exactly the same example here. I wonder why ...[sarcasm] – Lambie May 24 '23 at 15:35
  • https://www.britannica.com/place/Seine-River https://www.britannica.com/place/Seine-River https://www.travelfranceonline.com/river-seine-in-paris-history-and-facts/ River Seine – Lambie May 24 '23 at 16:20
  • Each translation has to be adapted to a reality. The way I wrote them is fine. Use "of" if you want, it is not necessary in these cases. – Lambie May 24 '23 at 17:27
  • 2
    @Lambie Not sure what you're saying I am mistaken about. You called the River Thames "a special case", but I don't see what you meant by that - the vast majority of the rivers of England follow that pattern. As I said just after, the opposite pattern tends to hold in the USA (and many other places), e.g. your Weir River. – James Martin May 24 '23 at 22:56
  • @JamesMartin OK, so in English most rivers are River Thames. In the states, it can go either way. BUT this is NOT the question. The question was about two communes and a town. And I don't see why the moderator does do something about that. – Lambie May 25 '23 at 17:07