# Place names with a definite article **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 3, 2022, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425 "2022-03-03T18:58:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2022, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/81 "2022-03-05T21:40:48Z")
They dropped the “Der”? That’s just plain wrong. Actually, I seem to remember that now. We had some in my West Texas berg. They went to gourmet hot dogs or some such, IIRC. Growing up we used to call the place “Der Dog.” ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2022, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/82 "2022-03-05T21:44:43Z")
And it should be “das.” ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2022, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/83 "2022-03-05T21:47:27Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Growing up we used to call the place “Der Dog.” Should have been “Das Hund.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2022, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/84 "2022-03-06T21:10:54Z")
My friend reports that in the Russian language, the preposition “NA” is used for regions and “V” is used for sovereign nations, corresponding to the use of “the” or its absence in English ---
**Author:** ![peccavi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peccavi/32/388_2.png) [@peccavi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peccavi)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2022, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/85 "2022-03-07T02:03:41Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > To add to the complications in America, “in the hospital” would generally imply being a patient (there are exceptions). “At the hospital” would imply being on the hospital grounds for some other reason. Similarly “in college” usually means “enrolled” while “at college” refers to physical presence. I wonder if the difference between British and US usage is that “in the hospital” in the US invariably means checked into the physical hospital, i.e. a place. The British usage may be “in hospital” to indicate undergoing a function or process of “hospital”. This seems to me to be backed up by the use of “at the hospital” to indicate being at a place being favored by both UK and US. I wonder if the British, after telling someone that their father was “in hospital”, if asked “Which one?” and not knowing the name, would reply “Hospital at the intersection of High Street and Broad Street” or would start the sentence with the article in question (the). ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2022, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/86 "2022-03-07T20:15:07Z")
A million years ago, I used to go there to play croquet against the retirees at the old folks home. ---
**Author:** ![Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d9b06d/32.png) [@Boozahol\_Squid\_P.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boozahol_Squid_P.I)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2022, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/87 "2022-03-07T20:16:52Z")
It’s called The Gambia after the Gambia River, and that’s the official name of the country, but it’s referred to colloquially as simply Gambia (at least that’s how the Gambian expats I work with refer to it.) ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/88 "2022-03-08T06:00:07Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Hopefully this will be considered relevant and not hijacky, but I’ve sometimes wondered why we in the U.S. use the article for places like “going to _ **the** _ hospital” or “to _ **the** _ university” when Canadians (and possibly in the U.K. as well…?) just say “to hospital” and “to university”. > > We all more or less speak English-- did we in the U.S. add the article at some point, or did Canadians (and possibly Brits) drop the article? I’ve speculated that this pattern started when Americans mostly lived in smaller towns – there was only 1 hospital or 1 university in the area, so it was referred to with the definite article. Whereas in Britain, being a much smaller & more crowded country, didn’t have the single one locally, so no definite article. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/89 "2022-03-08T06:01:15Z")
Will nobody think of The Tyrol? ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/90 "2022-03-08T06:49:04Z")
> [@solost](#): > > but I’ve sometimes wondered why we in the U.S. use the article for places like “going to _ **the** _ hospital” or “to _ **the** _ university” when Canadians (and possibly in the U.K. as well…?) just say “to hospital” and “to university”. As others have pointed out, we Americans will say that someone is “in school,” and I think the difference is that in the US, we think of “hospital” as a physical building and “university” as a physical campus, but “in school” can refer to the state of a person, without thinking about the building. In UK English, they think of “hospital” and “university” as the state that a person is in (when the words are used like that), and not so much a physical place. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/91 "2022-03-08T08:21:53Z")
That’s interesting; I had always assumed that the article in “The Gambia” came from the fact that the country was named after the river, and rivers typically go with articles. The river played an important role in the political history of the country: Surrounding Senegal was a French colony, but during the Seven Years’ War the Royal Navy made incursions along the river and took as much land as they could secure with ships. That’s why The Gambia is essentially a narrow strip of land inside Sebegal along the Gambia river. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/92 "2022-03-08T08:28:06Z")
As for The Hague in the Netherlands: The official name of the city in Dutch is 's‑Gravenhage, which has the additional coolness of being a place name that starts (!) with an apostrophe. That word means _the count’s hedge_, because the area was originally a hunting ground of the counts of Holland. That term was colloquially shortened to “the hedge”, and that shortened version gradually became official; the long version is hardly ever used except in very formal documents, although it does remain the formal name of the city. From that root, the definite article was carried over into many other languages. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/93 "2022-03-08T13:05:42Z")
> [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](#): > > > [@solost](#): > > > > Hopefully this will be considered relevant and not hijacky, but I’ve sometimes wondered why we in the U.S. use the article for places like “going to _ **the** _ hospital” or “to _ **the** _ university” when Canadians (and possibly in the U.K. as well…?) just say “to hospital” and “to university”. > > > > > We all more or less speak English-- did we in the U.S. add the article at some point, or did Canadians (and possibly Brits) drop the article? > > I’ve speculated that this pattern started when Americans mostly lived in smaller towns – there was only 1 hospital or 1 university in the area, so it was referred to with the definite article. Whereas in Britain, being a much smaller & more crowded country, didn’t have the single one locally, so no definite article. > [@CurtC](#): > > As others have pointed out, we Americans will say that someone is “in school,” and I think the difference is that in the US, we think of “hospital” as a physical building and “university” as a physical campus, but “in school” can refer to the state of a person, without thinking about the building. In UK English, they think of “hospital” and “university” as the state that a person is in (when the words are used like that), and not so much a physical place. Both interesting and plausible theories! I found this question and answer page which seems to bear out CurtC’s theory that, in British English at least, ‘in hospital’ is the state of being hospitalized, whereas ‘in _ **the** _ hospital’ is more the physical act of visiting the hospital. So then it eventually got ~~dumbed down~~ simplified in American English, maybe due to Tim\_T-Bonham.net’s theory. > ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/94 "2022-03-08T13:20:25Z")
> [@solost](#): > > in British English at least, ‘in hospital’ is the state of being hospitalized, whereas ‘in _ **the** _ hospital’ is more the physical act of visiting the hospital. Yes, as your link says, the same distinction occurs in US English with the phrases “in school/in college/at church” vs in “the school/in the college/at the church” so it’s a construction USians are familiar with; we just don’t use it for “hospital” for whatever reason. I’m not sure Tim’s theory is convincing – after all, lots of small localities only had one school and we don’t say “she’s in the school” when referring to being in classes (as opposed to merely the physical building.) ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/95 "2022-03-08T13:47:54Z")
This is slightly off-topic, but nonetheless: I work with a lot of people from all over Europe, with English as our working language, and I can often tell instantly if a document was written by a colleague with a Slavic native language: The use of definite articles is wrong. The Slavic languages don’t have articles, so people who grew up in that environment don’t develop a feeling for how to use them. They’ll either omit an article where there should be one, or conversely, they over-compensate and include articles where there shouldn’t be any. This is not meant in a disparaging way towards those colleagues - I’m sure I have my own idiosyncracies from my own native language. I simply find this one amusing because I noticed it many times. It’s quite a good shibboleth. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/96 "2022-03-08T14:03:45Z")
Thus, the typical American parody of a Russian spy speaking English is to leave off articles. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/97 "2022-03-08T17:01:04Z")
Also a good way of identifying Russian internet trolls. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/98 "2022-03-08T18:30:42Z")
In Russia, articles leave off you! ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/99 "2022-03-08T19:40:26Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > The [Gambia] river played an important role in the political history of the country: Surrounding Senegal was a French colony, but during the Seven Years’ War the Royal Navy made incursions along the river and took as much land as they could secure with ships. That’s why The Gambia is essentially a narrow strip of land inside Sebegal along the Gambia river. This was codified in the 1880s when they were drawing official borders for African colonies. The down-river parts of the Senegal-Gambian border are straight lines, but for the up river parts, they decided that the border would be a specific distance from the navigable part of the river. The distance they chose was the maximum range of a certain Royal Navy ship (which I assume was the most of any ship in the fleet at that time) and turned out to be ten miles. So the eastern part of Gambia became a twenty-mile wide worm following the course of the river. This is one of three border sections I know of that are based on a displacement from some other feature. The other two are state borders in the US. ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425/100 "2022-03-08T20:23:15Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Hopefully this will be considered relevant and not hijacky, but I’ve sometimes wondered why we in the U.S. use the article for places like “going to _ **the** _ hospital” or “to _ **the** _ university” when Canadians (and possibly in the U.K. as well…?) just say “to hospital” and “to university”. Especially if you play football and attended one particular university in Ohio… **THE** Ohio State University [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-names-with-a-definite-article/960425.md?page=6)