The Bronx

choi

Julia Vitullo-Martin, Concrete Jungle Dreams; The Bronx, now synonymous with poverty and crime, has also produced the likes of Al Pacino, Colin Powell and Daniel Libeskind. Wall Street Journal, Mar 31, 2015
(book review on Arlene Alda, Just Kids from the Bronx; Telling it the way it was; An oral history. Henry Holt, 2015)

first sentence of the review: “ ‘There are only three places that have a “the” in front of their name,’ says the novelist Mary Higgins Clark (b[orn] 1929 [but Wikipedia says 1927, at the Bronx]), ‘the Vatican, the Hague and the Bronx.’

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the review.

(b) Daniel Libeskind
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Libeskind
(1946- ; a Polish-American architect, born in Poland by Polish Jews)
(i) I have seen a couple of Jews whose last names end with “kind.”
(ii) The German and Jewish (Ashkenazic) surname Kind: "from Middle High German kint, German [noun neuter] Kind [K capitalized because it is a German noun] ‘child’, hence a nickname for someone with a childish or naive disposition, or an epithet used to distinguish between a father and his son. In some cases it may be a short form of any of various names ending in -kind, a patronymic ending of Jewish surnames."

(c) Off the top of my head, the Netherlands and the Philippines also are preceded by “the.”  They are excluded because these two are nations, not “places”?
(i) The Bronx
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bronx
(section 1.1 Etymology)
(ii) Brian Palmer, Why Is It Called The Hague?  And why is it in the Netherlands?  Slate magazine, Oct 27, 2009 (under the heading Explainer)
("We get the official name Den Haag from Des Graven Hage, which means 'the counts' hedge' ")
(A) Dutch English dictionary
* haag (noun feminine): "a hedge, thicket of woody bushes planted in a row"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/haag
(B) The hedge in question was to enclose a space.
(iii) Oliviu Felecan (ed), Name and Naming; Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012, at page 379
books.google.com/books?id=FT8sBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA379&lpg=PA379&dq="the+vatican"+name+definite+article&source=bl&ots=j69yi_ND76&sig=B1Yr4LfDXw0Bb4LjdRWldqTSDgs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ds8aVeCQG4iZyQTT14GgDg&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=%22the%20vatican%22%20name%20definite%20article&f=false
(Romanians' place-naming system: a Romanian place name "is translated from Latin, the only language among the languages of origin which, like Romanian, has the synthetic genitive: Romanian Statul Orașului Vatican - Latin Status Ciuitatis Uaticanae (whose literal translation into English is State of the City the Vatican) - while in Italian, the other official language of the state, the corresponding structure is [prep + art]: Stato della Città del Vaticano") (brackets original)

Romanian English dictionary
oraș (noun neuter): "city, town"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oraș