Grammar Nazis invade The Gambia and the Bahamas

There was a recent kerfuffle over a slip in diplomatically proper language, referring to the country of 'Ukraine' as 'the Ukraine' which is bothersome to many people in that country. Why it is bothersome is an entire story to itself. What came out of such kerfuffling is educating us all about proper ways of addressing countries, just like war is what teaches Americans about geography. But, out of curiosity, what exactly are the countries whose names begin with 'the'?

But that is the silliest of trivia questions, built on a number of arbitrary settings.

The only official such names? What is official? The CIA fact book? Who died and made them an authority? Oh, lots of spies. On all sides.

There's the official name in dictionaries. There's diplomacy. There is the natural ways of saying things. There is legal specification. And we've all forgotten that a lot depends on what language you're speaking in. There is what you call a country, what the country's name is, what the official name is, what you call the official name, and even what the country just is. OK those last two really are just straight of Lewis Carrol.

In pretty much any language, they use articles like 'the' differently. In American English you go to -the- hospital, but in the UK you go to hospital - for an American it sounds like there was a glitch in the tape and you forgot to say something, for the Brit in the US you wonder which hospital exactly are you talking about. Whenever you take a foreign language,at some point in the grammar lessons there is a section on "Which countries get a weird article in front of them". In English it is 'Switzerland', in German it is 'Die Schweiz'. In French, -all- countries have an article (with gender to remember). In Russian no country (or word) gets a 'the' (one of the very few times where Russian is simpler). Languages are weird, even your own, but you don't notice or don't care because that's just the way you do it. But in other languages even the slightest difference is jarring.

Back to trivia. The answer to the question, which must have artificial restrictions placed on the answers to work 'well' is (what does the CIA factbook say), in English the official names with 'the' are:

The Gambia
The Bahamas

Also 'The' is usually but not always capitalized in The Gambia, but never for the Bahamas. So much for consistency.

Those are their labels on maps and are the only ones with articles before their names on maps. But maps ain't what say what people actually use in language. There are a handful of additional examples for non-maps, for narratives. Possibly not headlines which have rules of their own.

Normal people, even smart ones, will say and use in writing:

The Netherlands
The Maldives
The Philippines

Sure, the title of the Wikipedia page is 'Philippines', but every mention of 'Philippines' in the article is preceded by 'the'. Every. And island groups, which are plural, take 'the' in English, whether countries or not.

And surprisingly few mentions have been made of the very obvious need for an article in:

The Central African Republic
The Czech Republic
The Dominican Republic
The Soviet Union
The United Arab Emirates
The United Kingdom
The United States

which get a 'the' whether abbreviated or not.

Sure, 'the Ukraine' has vague connotations 'that' area of the Russian/Soviet Empire and just isn't used anymore except as an anachronism. Frankly, I don't see how Ukrainians themselves perceive any such negative insinuations, since Ukrainian, like the very similar language Russian, has no articles at all, not just none for countries.

But anyway, we should call them as they ask, Ukraine.

For completeness sake, the countries like Ukraine which used to have a the (again for many different reasons), but just do not anymore, are:

The Congo
The Lebanon
The Sudan
The Ukraine
The Yemen

Those similarly sound colonial in English, and are just not used anymore.

The Crimea on the other hand...