thee for the

[James Harbeck]

A restaurant in the Agincourt part of Toronto (often called
Asiancourt because of its high percentage of Chinese and other East
Asian residents) is called Thee Asian Kitchen. You can find its
website at http://www.theeasiankitchen.com/ . It serves Thai,
Japanese, and Chinese cuisine. My initial take on it is that this is
intended to be a somehow "classier" or more formal/archaic rendering
of "the". It could, on the other hand, be a Thai name ("thee" is, I
think, a word in Thai).

A little looking on the web finds Thee Bungalow,
http://www.theebungalow.com/ , in San Diego -- it has apparently been
there for 30 years. You can also find assorted hits if you Google
|thee shoppe|, for instance http://www.theeamishshoppe.com/ and
http://www.theeclockmaker.com/ .

Evidently this isn't especially uncommon or new (well, of course,
"thee" can be seen for "the" in some Middle English texts) in
signage, but I have to say I'm far more used to seeing "Ye" (always
reanalyzed, of course -- nobody knows about thorn these days!). For
this area in particular (Toronto and, more specifically, Agincourt),
I think the "thee" is something new. The only other business I can
find with "thee" in its name in the Toronto area in yellowpages.ca is
Thee Place for Paws Grooming Studio in Barrie (an exurb of Toronto).
I find three "Ye Oldes". (Googling "ye olde" gets 1,890,000; "thee
olde" gets 3,630, but it would seem that "thee" can be used without
the "olde" whereas "ye" always seems to get it -- I'm sure if anyone
has exceptions I'll hear of it.)

I wonder whether "thee" use in this way is on the increase or
decrease or is level.

Just incidentally, "kermit thee frog" gets 381 ghits. But I don't
have a sense (purely impressionistically) that "thee" for emphatic
"the" is really current.

James Harbeck.

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