Page "Proper noun" Paragraph 3

In English, proper names in their primary application cannot normally be modified by an article or other determiner ( such as any or another ), although some may be taken to include the article the, as in The Gambia, The Roaring Forties, or the Rolling Stones.

A proper name may appear to refer by having a descriptive meaning, even though it does not ( the Rolling Stones are not stones and do not roll ; a woman named Rose is not a flower ).

Or if it had once been descriptive ( and then perhaps not even a proper name at all ), it may no longer be so ( a location previously referred to as " the new town " may now have the proper name Newtown, though it is no longer new, and is now a city rather than a town ).