Using definite article with people's names

Question

So, in looking at some fairly basic German conversations, I came across the following:

Hallo, wie heißt du?

Ich heiße Susanne. Und du?

Ich bin der Martin. Und wer ist das?

Das ist meine Freundin, Anne.

In another question, the accepted answer for such a use of the definite article precedent to a person's name is that this is a "usage associated with the south of Germany more so than the north."

That is fine, but what I don't seem to understand is why use it in this situation at all? I could get behind it if there were more than one Martin, and you were pointing out the Martin to whom you are referring, but in this case, the implication is that there is only one, so what is its usage here?

Answer 1

Since you are not asking where it’s commonly used – i.e. South and West, partially at least –, but why a definite article before a given name would be appropriate at all, be assured that this is the very reaction Northerners are likely to show when first encountering this peculiar phrasal structure.

After living more than seven years south of the Mittellandkanal and A2, i.e. in Aldi Süd country, I have stopped cringing every time I hear it, but I still hope to move away before my children adopt this. It sounds that wrong! As far as I remember, I was first exposed to this usage by the song “Ich bin der Martin, ne” by comedian Diether Krebs in 1991, but back then considered it particular to the sociolect portrayed by his character, the eco-freak Martin.

I believe you can best explain it as an emphasis marker.

There are similar patterns that may be acceptable elsewhere, or are even more restricted geographically.

• Wo ist die Oma / der Opa / die Mama / der Papa? – quite common, though optional article
• Wo ist der Meyer / die Müller? – also optional usually, but less so for women interestingly
• Wo ist der Huber Peter / die Schröder Helga? – often considered exclusive to Bavarian
• Wo ist der Schüler Heinz / die schöne Grete? – article are mostly required with attributes (not just adjectives) before names of people

Answer 2

You can use it, but you need not do it. Other people may use it out of tradition or with special connotations.

For example, this can be used when talking to somebody as if he was a child.

Das ist der Martin. Und das ist die Oma Gertrude. …

Answer 3

I come from the northern half and say this too, and never noticed it was considered "wrong", until some people from even farther north thought it appropriate to correct me.

I believe the usage is from the influence of other languages, because the same usage of articles is very common also in italy, which apparantly is also southern neightbor to the german language area. Unfortunately I do not have knowledge in French, so I cannot decide whether this might be in roman languages in general.

Recently, while reading the books of the series "A Song of Ice and Fire" in english, I also found usages of articles in front of names where I would consider it wrong. So, apparantly it was used in more ancient formes of english, too.

Answer 4

This is not exactly an "answer", but something just occurred to me:

Being Bavarian and very much used to this construction, I feel weird saying "Ich bin Mac."

As a matter of fact, to me it makes my name sound like an adjective. Possibly (and I'd like to make it very clear that this is just a tentative theory), certain dialects developed the article + name combination as a marker?

Answer 5

With the genitive case in danger of extinction, there is no longer the possibility to recognize from the name which case it is (genitive case would exhibit a trailing s or an apostrophe for names ending in s or similar, e. g. for Alex).

Note that in Goethes time the dative case still had such a suffix, where "Anne" would have become "Annen".

So in my opinion using the article may be an assimilation of the Englisch construction, to make the case visible, so "present a gift to Anne" would translate to "der Anne ein Geschenk überreichen"