The New York Times evidently trusts at least some of its readers to appreciate even subtle classical allusions. A recent article had this subheading:
Nationwide lockdowns and school closings have broken routines and left ultra-Orthodox Jews time for questioning and self-discovery. Some found the examined life worth leaving.
In disappointing contrast, an article in a recent New Yorker was written as though readers have scant knowledge of American history:
In 1895, a Black educator named Booker T. Washington gave a speech in Atlanta calling for Black people to embrace life in the South, despite all its hardships.
A journal that trusted it's readers' general education would have written about a speech by "the Black educator Booker T. Washington." Referring to someone as "person named" indicates obscurity, and it is jarring see it used for a well-known historical figure, in the New Yorker of all places.
For example, the New Yorker would certainly not write that "In 1895, a playwright named Oscar Wilde was tried and convicted of gross indecency."
The indefinite article could be used ironically to emphasize a famous figure's emergence on the national scene. Perhaps, "In 1895, an unlikely candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination was a former Nebraska congressman named William Jennings Bryan." Booker T. Washington, however, was already nationally prominent in 1895, which is why his Atlanta speech was a big deal at the time.
Even if Booker T. Washington is no longer studied in school, as he was during my childhood, it would still signify due respect for his importance by using the definite article as an expectation of familiarity with his name.
On the other hand, it would be fine to write that "in 1895, a Norwegian explorer named Fridtjof Nansen almost reached the North Pole."
And by the way, the reference in the Times headline should not be described as an allusion to "a Greek philosopher named Socrates."
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