Proper nouns have a "built-in" determiner and don't need articles.
I talked to John.
I talked to the cat.
However, you are using both names as adjectives to describe the noun region, so you still need the determiner.
If you were using the words as nouns then no determiner needed since they'd be proper in English too.
I went to the Zemplin region.
I went to Zemplin.
An interesting question, touching on a point of syntax I do not see in
my grammar references. Let us explore.
Intuitively, a native English speaker recognizes that the before
names is optional in each of these cases. (The last sentence is
different syntactically, and is not addressed in this answer.) Here are
some similar constructions where the is likewise optional:
- [The] leaders of democratic nations are usually persuasive public speakers.
- [The] shorelines of lakes are sometimes highly developed.
- [The] covers of graphic novels often feature a dramatic scene from the story.
In each of these cases, as well as the cases in the question, the is
only optional because the noun it modifies is also being modified by a
prepositional phrase — “of languages”, “of democratic nations”, “of
graphic novels”. Without such a prepositional phrase, we would be
referring to names, shorelines, etc. in general, and the use of the
would be incorrect (unless an earlier sentence had specified what names
or shorelines we are referring to). With such a phrase, the can be
used or omitted, and the sentence sounds correct either way. Why?
I think it is because the noun phrase in these cases is a sort of
hybrid. The noun can be viewed as a generic noun (names, leaders,
shorelines, covers in general), which cannot take the; but it can
also be viewed as one that, having been specified (names of languages,
shorelines of lakes), does take the. Consider these phrases:
- Covers of graphic novels
- The covers of graphic novels
The first usage seems more generic: covers of all graphic novels,
considered as a class. The second seems more specific: which covers?
these covers.
As I said, a most interesting question, and one that I was unable to
find addressed in my reference materials. I did find some material
online addressing similar issues:
Best Answer
I do not know of any reason it would be wrong to use the articles in bold. I would use them myself (N. Am. English native speaker).
But it's not just my opinion: this is the practice at The New York Times (search article cited for "the Clarett Group", a defunct developer for which the article "the" was never part of its name, as opposed to other companies like The Trump Organization, where "the" is part of the name). Other sources writing about the same developer also follow this practice (notice that the name in bold does not include the article "the").
This is also perfectly in line with usual practice when referring to other names made up of adjectives plus common nouns ("the New York Yankees", "the Catholic Church", "the Department of Homeland Security", etc).
A better question is, when would you not use "the"? The only time it would be obviously inappropriate is if you were referring to company names that can only be read as proper nouns:
Here it would be obviously incorrect to say "the Microsoft" or "the JetBlue Airlines".