As far as I know, in European Portuguese the use of the definite article with people's names is considered standard, and not using it is very formal. In Modern Greek (not a Romance or Germanic language, but still relevant) it is mandatory (except, naturally, in the vocative), and not using it would be considered ungrammatical.
As for why it is considered "bad style" in languages that have it in dialects but not in the standard language, I think it's mostly a problem of the standard language being based on an older form than current vernaculars (Written French in particularly is quite archaising compared to Spoken French), a form where personal names cannot take the article. Since anything not part of the standard is considered "wrong" (the typical prescriptivist view), personal names with articles are considered "wrong" as well.
The use of definite articles with personal names typically appears rather late in the evolution of definite articles. Definite articles typically originate from demonstrative determiners whose meaning gets eroded with time (from "this man" to "the man"). From anaphoric/cataphoric/spatial use to "simple" definition, the erosion of meaning carries on, and as it does the article's use becomes more and more mandatory, for more and more nouns (basically, it stops adding a specific meaning, and starts being seen as just something that must be used with nouns that are considered definite, even if they would still be considered definite without it). You can see this evolution by looking at how different languages use the definite article:
- In English, the definite article is still considered to add definition to a noun, and for this reason is normally not used with nouns that are semantically definite, like concepts (you say "peace", not *"the peace"), proper nouns (names of countries, regions, towns, etc.) and personal names;
- In French, the article has a much less strong meaning by itself, and is used more often than in English. For instance, concepts in French do take the article ("la paix"), as well as country and region names ("la France, la Bretagne"). Other proper nouns (e.g. names of towns) sometimes take the article and sometimes do not, and it's difficult to describe this use in terms of rules. As for personal names, they normally don't take the article, although some rural dialects do so (but the vast majority of French people, at least in France, don't use articles with personal names);
- In Modern Greek, the erosion of meaning is nearly complete (maybe because the definite article has been extant for more than 2000 years!): it doesn't really add definition to nouns, rather it must appear when a noun is definite, whether this definition is semantic, pragmatic, or due to other determiners. So in Greek the definite article is used with all proper nouns without exception, but it is even used in addition to the demonstrative adjectives (so "this man" is "αυτός ο άνθρωπος", literally "this the man").
So, whether using the definite article with people's names is "bad style" or not could be said to depend on the prescriptivist's view of what the definite article's role is: if its role is to add definiteness to a noun, then it's more likely to be considered incorrect to add it to nouns that are already definite by meaning, like people's names. If its role, however, is merely to indicate that a noun is definite, then it is more likely to be acceptable to use it with nouns that are already semantically definite.
@JSB Yes, I am looking for something other, but I am not sure how to phrase the question because I don't know if the other answer exists. A satisfactory answer (that I am inventing right now) might say something like: Most European languages used the article before names, but Church Latin didn't, so articles were viewed as uneducated when Latin in monastery schools became the language of education. // While such an answer is not forthcoming, the list of examples might give a clue. – Phira – 2011-09-14T08:14:12.217
3This is common colloquially in other German regions. The use also occurs in Czech (this is the provenance of the phrase 'The Donald' in English, because Ivana Trump used to refer to her husband that way). – Mitch – 2011-09-13T21:21:52.737
Austrians speak the (Austro-)Bavarian language and in that language it is the norm. Since standard German is often taught as the norm, any specialty of our native language is considered bad by Germans. – Matthias Schreiber – 2016-08-16T07:10:22.020
1@Mitch: How colloquial is it, exactly? I remember learning this use of the article with proper names in German in (Dutch) high school. It looked strange to us, but we assumed it was "normal" in German... – Cerberus – 2011-09-14T00:33:12.850
1Of course, in English (and German and lots of other languages) this is also common in the plural, e.g. the Flintstones, the Jetsons, etc. – Timwi – 2011-09-14T00:37:23.300
I'm not a speaker of the Austrian dialect, but in standard German, it's an indicator of familiarity, not something that's "always used": "der Franz" is the Franz in our group of friends, the first "Franz" that both the speaker and the listener would think of. If we would think of different people first, or if either of us doesn't know the person very well, no article is used. You wouldn't use it in formal writing because you aren't writing to an audience that would feel intimately familiar with the same people. – Theodore Murdock – 2012-10-12T22:57:21.887
1@Mitch: How in Czech? AFAIK Czech (like the other East and West Slavonic languages) doesn't have articles. – Colin Fine – 2012-10-15T17:26:02.817
@ColinFine: oh. hmm...yes, you're right. Maybe I"m passing on a misremembered anecdote. Czech has demonstratives; maybe they're used like he OP says about German? – Mitch – 2012-10-15T20:10:09.903
1This is an interesting question, but I'm not crazy about the way it's currently phrased. Can you clarify what you're actually asking? Are you looking for something other than a list of examples? – JSBձոգչ – 2011-09-14T01:51:43.797
In northern italian dialects/inflections it is rather common: "la Maria" for "(the) Mary", "il Gianni" for "(the) John", and so on. It is informal and is a telltale of the regional provenience: you will not hear such a construction in Rome, for instance. So in (the dialect of) Rome there is no "'a Maria" (-> (the) Maria), "er Gianni" (-> (the) Gianni), while you can hear "er Sor Mario", that is "(the) Mr. Mario". – Francesco – 2013-01-03T16:04:32.480