I’m writing on topic of The Gambia currently and I can tell you lots of things about developments there over the last, say, fifty years. There’s two things, though, that I, for the life of me, couldn’t tell you, which is why I’m asking here.
Why The Gambia?
(this one more elaborate) The Gambian economy traditionally relies on growing and exporting groundnuts, i.e. (at least, I believe i.e.) peanuts. Other foodstuffs, such as rice, are being imported. Now I happen to know next to nothing about peanuts, but I’d guess that if you can grow a peanut somewhere, you might also be able to grow cassaves or yams or potatoes or something like that there. Anything but peanuts! Apparently this is not the case, though, so what explains (The) Gambia’s reliance on peanuts?
The country only extends for a couple of miles or so on either side of the Gambia river; it seems logical that the country be called “The Gambia” as it’s there’s really not a hell of a lot else to it besides the river, at least geographically speaking.
Wikipedia says that the “The” in The Gambia’s name is to distinguish the country from Zambia; but no cite is given and I don’t know how accurate the statement is.
Well, there’s a number of other countries which derive their names from rivers. Zambia (named after the Zambesi), Uruguay, Paraguay, and Congo come to mind, and I’m sure there are others - not to mention states in the U.S. I agree that these countries extend further than just a few miles beyond the riverside. But even in the case of Gambia, there still is quite a considerable difference between the river and the country, so I don’t think it’s all that logical to add the article to thje country’s name.
I’d say it’s simply one of those “it’s because it has always been so” things for which you won’t find any compelling reasons.
I didn’t say it made any sense; I was just reiterating a possible answer from Wikipedia.
Lots of people (Myself included) still refer to “The Congo” (Yes, I know there’s more than one country with that name) when talking about those countries as well as the river.
I don’t know how relevant this is, but perusing 19th Century maps of my own city, it seems that including “the” was commonplace then whereas it isn’t now. The Sydney suburb of Glebe was The Glebe, Parramatta Road (the road to the town of Parramatta) was The Parramatta Road, etc. Maybe The Gambia is just something that survived modernisation, perhaps because changing a country name is more involved than changing a suburb or road one.
Another aside: It seems to be a peculiarity of English, among the European languages, not to include articles in country names. In French, it’s common - almost every country name in French has the article with it. In Spanish and Portuguese, it’s common at least in the case of countries which derive their names from geographical features (examples are again the República Oriental del Uruguay and the República del Paraguay). In German, it’s comparativley rare, but it occurs (die Schweiz, die Türkei, der Iran). In English, the only example where it’s standard seems to be The Gambia, although there are countries whose name would lend itself to it (such as “the” Ivory Coast).
There’s some other countries that take an article: The Ukraine - although this is not approved of by Ukrainians as it is russocentric -, The Lebanon, and The Netherlands ;). English is not alone in this, though: in Dutch, there’s no articles for countries except for The Ukraine.
Anyway, it looks like this ‘The Gambia’ thing is not going to be resolved. What about those peanuts?
Apparently it’s more profitable for Gambian landowners and peasants to produce peanuts than edible crops. As long as the money made from peanut exports is sufficient to fund food imports, I don’t see why this should be a problem for the country.
As to why it’s more profitable to grow peanuts than, say, potatoes: I have no idea, but I venture a WAG. Maybe potato production in Gambia, as in other developing countries, isn’t competitive on the world market in comparison to heavily subsidized American or European exports. The European Union, OTOH, doesn’t grow peanuts (at least not substantially; Wiki claims that the EU doesn’t produce peanuts at all, but I find a total production of zero a bit hard to believe), so it might be a good deal for Gambian farmers to sell their peanuts to industrialized countries and import their cheap, subsidized food crops.
Well, this is something I learned just recently on this fine board, in a thread that I am now unable to find. The reason it is called ‘the Ukraine’ is because The Ukraine used to be seen as a region, part of Mother Russia, and not a country in its own right. Etymologically, Ukraine is argued to mean ‘borderland’ (cite; see also here). So speaking of The Ukraine is like speaking of ‘The South’, or ‘The Country’ - it is referring to the area not independently, but in relation to some other area. Ukrainians - or at least some of them, at any rate - like this usage none too much and thus prefer to speak of Ukraine and not The Ukraine. This applies only to the English language, or any language with prepositions, for that matter, but not to Russian or Ukrainian, neither of which have prepositions. Therefore, and given that Russians and Ukrainians usually don’t possess the skills to appreciate these finer distinctions of the English language, I think this is a fairly parochial debate that is limited to Ukrainians and Russians living in the English-speaking world, especially the US.
English often sticks “the” before the names of many countries if the name is plural in form, even if used with a singular verb: the Netherlands, theMaldives, the United States, the Seychelles and thePhilippines.
In other cases, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason. Other examples that haven’t been mentioned are the Sudan and the very old-fashioned the Argentine.
