'the' in front of the name of an institution?

[xupeng66]

Hi All,

This is a question that seems pretty trivial but has bother me for quite a long time. Do I need to use the article 'the' in front of a name of an institution?

For example, should I say: 'The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a world renowned oceanic research institute.' or without 'the' at the beginning of the sentence?

Thanks!

 

[Tdol]

They have their name twice on their homepage without the article, so I wouldn't use it, but if you prefer it with the article, you can use it- they use it once on the About page. If they're not consistent, I wouldn't worry.

 

[Roman55]

I am not a teacher.

It's their name. The institution should decide whether they want "the" in front of it, not you.

 

[MikeNewYork]

Hi All,

This is a question that seems pretty trivial but has bother me for quite a long time. Do I need to use the article 'the' in front of a name of an institution?

For example, should I say: 'The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a world renowned oceanic research institute.' or without 'the' at the beginning of the sentence?

Thanks!

I would not use the article.

 

[Raymott]

They have their name twice on their homepage without the article, so I wouldn't use it, but if you prefer it with the article, you can use it- they use it once on the About page. If they're not consistent, I wouldn't worry.

But that only solves the problem for organisations that have a web page. I think that using "the" as the default is less likely to cause trouble than leaving it out by default. In fact, we often use "the" even if it's not in the proper name.
"They sent me to the Mayo Clinic"; "I visited the Kremlin".

In Brisbane, we have (at least) two hospitals named after royalty - one with "the" and one without. Who can ever guess?
http://www.health.qld.gov.au/tpch/
http://www.health.qld.gov.au/pahospital/

 

[Tdol]

That's a good point, and before I looked I would have gone for using the.