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That's interesting. I grew up in Pasadena in the 1960s and early 1970s, and my recollection is that freeways in the Los Angeles area were referred to by their n

That's interesting. I grew up in Pasadena in the 1960s and early 1970s, and my recollection is that freeways in the Los Angeles area were referred to by their names, both in the mass media and in conversation. Reading the following Wikipedia entry, I wonder if that popular usage changed after the overhead freeway signs were changed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_freeways#Freeway_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_freeways#F... While we're talking about the use of "the" with proper names, I've long been amused that, in most or all dialects of English, the names of rivers and oceans are preceded by "the" while the names of lakes are not: "the Nile," "the Indian Ocean," "Lake Baikal," "Lake Michigan." If anyone has an explanation for that, I would be very happy to hear it.

kuang_eleven 6y ago
Just speculation, but I wonder if it is because of the order of words; the Indian Ocean has the same structure of "[adjective] [noun]" where the adjective is describing the noun. In that case, English requires using "the" (think "the red car" or "the small book". Lakes don't do that; English would never have "[noun] [adjective]" and so the pattern isn't recognized as requiring "the" In that vein, SoCal uses "the" because "101 freeway" is the same pattern as "Indian Ocean", "101" is describing the kind of freeway you are talking about. No idea why NorCal doesn't do that; I blame brain damage caused by excessive fog.