Is it ‘the Back Bay’ or just ‘Back Bay’? The answer might surprise you.

Boston Globe

When it comes to Boston’s neighborhoods, the use of the definite article is not definitive.

By Camilo Fonseca, Boston Globe

May 17, 2026 | 5:00 am

6 minutes to read

Here’s a trick question: What do Back Bay, Fenway, and Seaport have in common?

certainly, High-end apartments and Rental prices are very high. But they also share something more basic, a simple three-letter word: “the.”

Or maybe none of them do.

When it comes Boston neighborhoodsthe use of the definite article is far from definitive. For some, adding the “the” before the neighborhood’s name is natural, referring to its unique character and historical identity. It’s always the “North End”. “South End”. God forbid that “Al” falls from the western side. Someone will want a word.

But if you bump into someone on the street, you might hear them drop the “l.” I live in Fenway. They work in Back Bay. Let’s have a drink in Seaport.

“It’s just the Back Bay,” said Marian Zemis, a graduate student at Boston University, as she sat on a park bench on Commonwealth Avenue. “I’ve never heard of ‘Back Bay,’ actually.”

Tell that to some residents, and they’ll give you a weird face.

“We always say ‘back by’ when someone asks us where we live,” said 76-year-old Cathy Ennis. “I have no idea, really, why we do that.”

Her husband, David Ennis, 75, took a moment to put the words in his mouth.

Consider “Back Bay”. “I live in Back Bay.”

After a few seconds, he shook his head. “It’s not working,” he said.

For some populations, the distinction is lost completely.

“I’ve never heard the term ‘seaport’ except in the signs I see on the way to the airport,” said Anthony Sammarco, a local historian. “I think that’s the official name. But do you hear people say that? No!”

But reality is not so cut and dried. In a poll conducted by a neighborhood group on Facebook, 68 percent of respondents said they live “in Seaport,” compared to 32 percent “in Seaport.” (The only point of agreement seems to be that residents barely use “South Boston Waterfront,” which is the neighborhood’s official name.)

If residents are divided, what will the city say?

Official sources are not much help. City location Lists Every neighborhood doesn’t have an “the” — even those, like South End, where the presence of the definite article isn’t controversial. Even these names are not “official,” as city planners work in terms of zoning rather than traditional neighborhood boundaries.

(For the record, the Globe’s senior copy editor recommends using “the” for all relevant neighborhood names.)

So there’s not a lot of agreement one way or the other. It seems fitting for Boston, where seemingly trivial issues can spark intense debate.

“I think it has a lot to do with the length of exposure to the city of Boston, and the Back Bay neighborhood, specifically,” said Meg Mainzer Cohen, president of the Back Bay Association. “Whether you grew up here, or you came here recently. I think that’s where the differences lie.”

In her experience, long-term residents usually default to including the definite article, while newcomers “may not have fully adapted to the same slang.”

And it’s true: most of the area’s history uses Back Bay, which dates back to 1857. When city planners started filling in swamp water to build housing. So does he Henry Jamesin his country The Gilded Age In The Bostonians, she describes the newly built neighborhood as “a row of houses, impressive…in their extreme modernity.” (“Don’t you hate the name?” one character quips.)

But since then, “Back Bay” has filled the gap; A review of Google Books data shows that the two, in written usage at least, are now roughly equivalent.

For proponents of the “back bay,” the article makes a small but crucial distinction; He loves Ohio State University.It indicates something special and unique.

“there Other back bays“,” Mainzer Cohen said. “I don’t think the shopping in Back Bay, Antarctica is as good as it is in Back Bay.”

Some say calling it “Fenway” also helps distinguish the neighborhood (officially part of the neighborhood). Fenway-Kenmore) from the stadium. That would make sense, if it weren’t for A Latest social media survey With nearly 90 percent of people saying plain old “Fenway” is just as good.

Naming the waterfront neighborhood that houses luxury apartments and upscale restaurants is a thornier question, tangled with decades of redevelopment and local squabbling. Suggested for the first time Known as the “Seaport District”, it has been officially named the “South Boston Waterfront” – Concession from Mayor Thomas Menino to South Boston politicians Which has not stood the test of time.

The developers have, for the most part, ignored the official name in favor of the independent brand “Seaport” – In itself a matter of legal dispute In some cases.

In his view, dropping the “the” is a branding scheme, said neighborhood advocate Steve Hollinger. Developers have long sought to make the neighborhood “its own thing,” he said, and many residents feel the same way.

“There’s probably a larger audience called ‘seaport,’ and that’s kind of the target audience for the WS development,” he said, referring to The company responsible for much of the neighborhood’s transformation. “Whether it’s transplants or not, I don’t know, but [they are] Definitely skews younger.

WS development works bostonseaport.xyzthe entire official neighborhood website which almost exclusively uses just “Seaport”. (domain for bostonseaport.com It remains reserved for Hollinger, who said he “didn’t want them to suggest they own the rights to that word.”)

Hollinger, 63, said that although he probably refers to the neighborhood in both directions — “It kind of depends on the context,” he said — most people he knows tend to use the definite article.

But, as Google Books data shows, Seaport loyalists may soon be in the minority — if they aren’t already.

So, if most people in the neighborhood call it “Seaport,” does that make it right?

maybe, said Margaret Thomas, a professor of linguistics at Boston College.

“In every society, people innovate, unconsciously or self-consciously, to create new forms,” she said. “[Some] People are attracted to new forms. Others are averse to new forms.

It is collective “speech community” This is what ultimately decides what we call things,” she said.

Place names are usually more stable than other elements of the language, which often change over time, Thomas said.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t evolve as well. We might think of Roxbury as ambiguous The name is correct today, but the name comes from its rocky terrain (“Roxboro”). Other names are more exotic abbreviations: the original Boston, in Lincolnshire, England, was once the town of St Botolph’s.

“It was [once] “A description,” said Thomas, “but it has become just a label, like an unanalyzable label.”

Maybe like a port.

She added that it is not surprising that young people seem more likely to abandon the “the” word, given the generational habit of experimenting with language.

“Young people, teenagers, college students, are kind of a dynamo of linguistic change,” Thomas said.

Look no further than Thomas’s students. In an informal survey, most of them indicated that they would never say the “no” word when talking about it [the] harbor, [the] Return Bay, or [the] Fenway. Even those who grew up in the Boston area said they would drop the definite article at least occasionally.

“The whole system is constantly undergoing change and erosion,” Thomas said. “Like sand dunes, they never disappear, but move century after century.”

Hollinger has lived in the seaport for more than three decades, but he said he’s not bothered by a three-letter word. He remembers calling a tug of war between Menino and South Boston something that had fared better in the past.

He noted that there are bigger things to worry about in the neighborhood.

“I don’t see the world as binary,” Hollinger said. “Whatever you want to call it, call it.”