A Very Important Poll

[melannen]

A question that came up as a result of both my going through my local history books and an argument Mom and I had on our mini-road-trip out to South Jersey:

Poll #21872 Important Poll

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 111

View Respondents

Which is more correct:

View Answers

We drove to the Chesapeake Bay
27 (27.0%)

We drove to Chesapeake Bay
73 (73.0%)

Which is more correct:

View Answers

We drove to the San Francisco Bay
32 (31.4%)

We drove to San Francisco Bay
70 (68.6%)

Which is more correct:

View Answers

We drove to the Hudson Bay
21 (21.0%)

We drove to Hudson Bay
79 (79.0%)

Which is more correct:

View Answers

We drove to the Delaware Bay
29 (30.9%)

We drove to Delaware Bay
65 (69.1%)

Which is more correct:

View Answers

We drove to the Monterey Bay
11 (10.8%)

We drove to Monterey Bay
91 (89.2%)

Which is more correct:

View Answers

We drove to the bay
71 (68.3%)

We drove to the Bay
33 (31.7%)

Which is more correct

View Answers

We drove down to the bay
78 (90.7%)

We drove up to the bay
8 (9.3%)

Which is more correct

View Answers

We drove toward the bay on the 80
42 (42.4%)

We drove toward the bay on 80
57 (57.6%)

You are from:

View Answers

the Bay Area or nearby
18 (16.5%)

the Tidewater or nearby
9 (8.3%)

Canadia
8 (7.3%)

Somewhere else on the West Coast
16 (14.7%)

Somewhere else on the East Coast
27 (24.8%)

Somewhere else in North America
28 (25.7%)

Somewhere primarily English-speaking other than North America
19 (17.4%)

I don't speak English as my primary language and y'all need to sort your stuff out
8 (7.3%)

Markobutono
5 (4.6%)

Comments

[megpie71]

My only comment would be that in Australia, we'd drive to the bay at 80 (km/h, speed limits permitting), and we'd probably get there via something named "The Coast Road" (either formally or informally).

[melannen]

Honestly you would probably not drive to the Bay on 80 in America either, but there are no interstate highways that connect to more than one of the bays in question (I would generally drive to the Bay via either Route 50 or Route 404 or sometimes Route 2), so I picked one that sort of vaguely connects the San Francisco Bay to New York Bay. Ish.

[sophia_sol]

Driving either "down" or "up" to the bay depends entirely on where the bay in question is in relation to where you are! And honestly I would usually skip the up/down word from that sentence entirely. And the sentence absolutely needs a specific about which bay you are driving to.

(You can tell from this that I do not live very close to any particular bay.)

[melannen]

See, I would say it depends on whether you are going up or down too! But I've been told you can only ever go down to the Bay regardless of where it is.

[kore]

Grew up in CA, grew up some more in NM, lived in Seattle the past 20 years.

One thing is I think of "Monterey Bay" as a proper name -- so "the Monterey Bay" sounds wrong, like "the San Francisco" or "the Notre Dame," if that makes sense. "We went to Notre Dame," or "We went to the Notre Dame cathedral."

[melannen]

Yes, my mom's argument is that it's a proper name, so it doesn't get the article. But you would absolutely say that you went to the Cathedral of Notre Dame! You would probably not say you went to the Notre Dame Cathedral (although you might) but you would definitely say you went to the National Cathedral (or that you went to the First Methodist Church down the street.)

(I think Notre Dame (and also places like St. Paul's) are actually a special case because they're possessives and you don't ever put definite articles on possessives.)

And people seem pretty unanimous, once they have thought about it, that all rivers from the Mississippi River to the Thames River to the Ganges River get the "the". So I don't think the "proper name" argument is valid (but I think some people may have been taught it anyway.)

[kore]

Also "The bay on 80" sounds like the bay is ON 80. But "The bay on the 80" also sounds weird.

[melannen]

That was meant to test for the weird parts-of-California thing of calling Interstate Highways "The" that gets all over the place because the people who write TV shows think it's normal.

[the_rck]

Up to the bay if going north. Down to the bay if going south. Out to or over to the bay if going east or west.

The bays I'm likely to talk about driving to are Saginaw Bay and other Great Lakes bays, and I wouldn't use an article for most of them. Of course, a lot of Michiganders just refer to Saginaw as 'the bay' as it kind of dwarfs the others in the area.

For bays that aren't so local, I'm not sure how I'd speak of them. I haven't heard of some of those you list.

[melannen]

That is sensible to me!

I have sometimes though the 'The' is there mostly as a superlative and would only get used for bays that are The Bay, at least regionally, but I'm not sure I can make that hold what either - as you say, there are bays that are The Bay but would never be called The X Bay.

[mrkinch]

I'm fascinated to know why its "the SF Bay" but just "Monterey Bay". Could it be analogy with Monterey as a general place, which SF is less so, being closely surrounded by many other "places", other civic entities? *insert shrug emoji"

[melannen]

I don't know! I added that in particular because for me the Chesapeake is ALWAYS "The" and Monterey is NEVER "The" and honestly the others I have a preference but it could go either way. I thought maybe it was a local vs. not-local thing but Monterey is way more unanimous than the others!

It could be something about Monterey as a place-name in general? But IDK, people still say "The Monterey area" just like they would "The Chesapeake area".

[duskpeterson]

I've lived in Maryland for decades. I've always heard it as "the Chesapeake Bay" or "the bay."

[melannen]

Me too! But I have this pile of Tidewater Publishers books that are supposed to be full of local information and half of them leave off the The. And my mom, who has lived here at least 40 years, claimed she didn't know what I was talking about when I said it was wrong. (And then said it in repeatedly in casual conversation and denied it when I pointed it out.) I'm wondering if there's some official style guide somewhere that claims bays are never The or something.

(They also leave it off on the TV show Bones, but on Bones they also talk about driving to Baltimore on "The 95" and Glen Burnie is a picturesque waterfront town, so Bones doesn't have a say.)

[duskpeterson]

(Though I should add that I have no opinion on "the bay" or "the Bay.")

[melannen]

I don't either, really, but it's another thing my book collection seems to go both ways on!

That might actually be about whether you're using bay as the standard non-proper noun or as synecdoche for the Chesapeake Bay, except in that case, you'd expect people who are using the Bay to also use the Chesapeake Bay, and often they don't; it doesn't correlate.

[landofnowhere]

"Did you ever see a whale/ with a polka dot tail? ... down by the bay."

[melannen]

All day, all night, Mary Ann, down by the seaside sifting sand?

[seascribble]

Notes on up and down to the bay; depends on if it's up or down of me on the map. I think I would usually say down, but can imagine situations in which up would not be weird.

Re: the many ticky boxes on location, I moved around A LOT as a child and now live in Canada.

[melannen]

Yep, that's why I made that one ticky boxes. I hope you didn't stay in the Tidewater long, though, because you are wrong about the Chesapeake. :P

[cathexys]

Doesn't driving up or down to the bay depend on where you are in relationship to it?

-- living above "a" bay to which I'd drive down (both North to South and elevation wise :)

[cathexys]

And now i'm seeing others are saying the same thing. I wonder if "Bay Area" people feel they own the bay like New Yorkers own "the city" :)

-- suddenly fiercely protective of MY bay area :)

[primeideal]

Grew up in the Midwest, would not say "the" when a specific bay is named, would say "the" in the generic case. "down" is more correct than "up" but it depends.

I would say "The 80" over "80" but that's an effect of living on the West Coast now. In my home dialect I think the most correct version would be "on I-80" (!)

[melannen]

We would probably say I-80 most of the time here on the East Coast, too, tbh - we really only drop the I when it's one of the local roads everybody drives on constantly (like 95. 97. Or 495. Or 695. or 295 or 395. Or, well, you get the idea.) We also drop the I for non-interstate routes of equivalent importance, though, which can be very confusing when there are state and national routes with the same number (like 97.)

Would you ever say The I-80 out on the Left Coast?

[stellar_dust]

"I'm going to Chesapeake" is confusing. "I'm going to the Chesapeake" is fine. "I'm going to San Francisco" definitely doesn't mean the bay. "I'm going to the San Francisco" doesn't make sense.

I feel like this observation is important but i can't articulate why.

[rosefox]

Name vs. adjective, maybe? In "the San Francisco Bay", "San Francisco" is an adjective, clarifying which bay you mean, but "the Chesapeake Bay" is the name of the Chesapeake Bay and that's all there is to it.

[pauraque]

To me "we drove to the bay" means driving to the edge of the body of water, while "we drove to the Bay" means driving to the (SF) Bay Area from elsewhere.

[melannen]

Interesting! I don't think "we drove to the Bay" would ever mean anything other than specifically "the waters of the Chesapeake" around here. "We drove to the bay" I would expect a clarification of which bay to be coming soon.

[lannamichaels]

We drove toward the bay on 80

*twitchily sneaks an I into there before the 80*

I think the only interstates that sound "right" to me without the I are the 3 digit ones. "We took 395" works fine for me. But 80 does not work fine for me.

[elf]

Yes, this. I had to adjust it to "drove toward the bay on 580" in my head to figure out which phrasing sounded better. I kept wanting to say "the 80" just because it didn't have enough syllables.

[monksandbones]

We drove to the Bay, but in the (western) Canadian context "the Bay" is the local Hudson Bay Company department store!

[melannen]

That was part of the reason I put it in the poll - I kept bumping into the store when I tried to google, and I wanted to know if the actual Bay was ever the Bay or just the store!

[brownbetty]

Neither are correct, because The Hudson Bay is not road accessible??? Like, as monksandbones says, also, the Bay is the department store, but also if you want to get to the Hudson Bay by land, your best bet is probably snowmobile. Which I know is not in the vicinity of your question, but is a pretty defining feature of the that whole area, so is hard for me to let go of.

[melannen]

But you drive snowmobiles too, don't you? You do around here (when there is enough snow for them, anyway.)

The thing is I wanted it to be "went to X Bay", but "went to X bay" sounds wrong because around here we never "go to the Bay", we always "go down to the Bay", but I knew that "go down to the bay" would be wrong to some people so I needed a different verb. :/ Linguistics is tricky!

I am complicated, such that I would pop the bubbles.

[samjohnsson]

I've been sitting here trying to fill this out, and I couldn't choose for the first set, and I realized what was causing it:

Correct: We drove to the Chesapeake Bay (to do things in the water).
Correct: We drove to Chesapeake Bay (to do things in the township of that name).

Both are right, depending on where we're going. Lowercase for me, generally, but I know the cousins upstate will capitalize when they talk about a specific bay on Champlain.

There's a difference between "We drove down to the bay" and "We drove up to the bay", but I'm having a heck of a time parsing it. Don't laugh, but I think it's direction in the watershed: whether it's upstream/downstream. Functionally "down to" for the examples you gave, but there's a couple lakes I can go up to.

"toward the bay on 80" is _marginally_ better, but it still sounds wrong. I'd need a "state 80" or "US 80" or "Route 80" or "I-80" or "Farm 80" or something that lets me know which 80 it is.

New Englander, here, so top end of the East Coast

Re: I am complicated, such that I would pop the bubbles.

[wolby]

Agreed! Except "towards the bay on 80" doesn't bother me at all.

I'm from Colorado (...slight lack of bays), but have lived in DC for 10 years.

[staranise]

I'm reminded of the relatively recent shift from "the Ukraine" to "Ukraine", which had significant connotations about Ukraine's legitimacy as a sovereign state.

[wolby]

He suspects that people once preferred to add the article if the place name related to a geographical feature like a group of islands (Bahamas) a river (Congo), a desert (Sudan) or mountain range (Lebanon).

"Later the phrases were shortened, but the article survived. Hence the arbitrary rule that river names, the names of deserts and mountain ranges need 'the'."

Oh interesting, thanks for the link. I've wondered about the difference but kept forgetting to look it up.

Which reminds me that I used "the Pale of Settlement" in a conversation this weekend and then struggled to define what it was. I said "Ukraine, basically" but it looks like it was a lot more than that.

[jmtorres]

i know this is terribly ethnocentric but my answer to up or down depends strongly on whether you drove north or south.

[melannen]

That seems to be a fairly common answer! I should probably do another whole poll just on variants of that one, but I'm not sure where to even start.

[poshmerchant]

For me, it depends on whether "Bay" is part of the proper name or not. "Drove to the X bay" and "Drove to X Bay".

Is Chesapeake Bay a bay, or is it a town on the Chesapeake bay?

[melannen]

I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making here. Are you saying that "bay" is not part of the proper name of the Chesapeake Bay, it just means "the bay of the Chesapeake region"? Hmmm. I'm not sure how that actually parallels to usage in the real world - the Chesapeake region is rather the region of the Chesapeake Bay - but it does kind of feel right.

The Chesapeake Bay is a bay, and there is no town of that name that I know of, although when people leave off the "the" I double-take and think maybe they do mean something else.

[telly]

Northern Californian within driving distance of both SF and Monterey bays. If someone said "THE Monterey Bay" I'd expect the phrase to finish with "Aquarium" so otherwise it doesn't get the direct article. Otoh SF Bay is just "the Bay" 99% of the time. (And Bodega Bay never gets a direct article because it's also a town. BTW we drive "out" to that one.)

[melannen]

Out! That's a new one I hadn't though about. I think in fact we would always drive down to the ocean, but we could drive out to Ocean City, even though both of those things mean the exact same place.

I agree with you on your bays! It's an interesting mix with San Francisco Bay.

[ilyena_sylph]

I mostly answered b/c I have firm opinions that interstates do NOT get 'the' before them.

But neither in my area do we say I-#, except on traffic radio.

[melannen]

I didn't realize the I- question would be that important, because around here we leave it on or drop it willy-nilly.

I agree with you about "the" though. Some roads get "The", but never if you're using a number in the name.

[reginagiraffe]

I don't know about the other bays but it's always "the Chesapeake Bay" and "the Eastern Shore".

[melannen]

Good, you are correct! :D

[dhampyresa]

I went with "down to the bay" because you go down to the sea, the same way you go up to the city. Although that might just be transference from the French "monter sur [city]", which is independent of North/south -- eg "Je suis à Londres en ce moment, mais je monte sur Paris ce weekend"/"I'm in London right now, but I'm coming up to Paris this weekend".

[melannen]

Up for the city and down for the sea definitely a distinction that sounds right to me as a non-French speaker, but it appears to be very very regional in English.