Well, I did say names, not nouns.
Pay attention Markxxx. I mentioned The Dalles, OR up above. It’s a partial translation of La Dalles, the flagstones. Though I must admit that The Dulles is a more accurate name for the place…
Another The place: The Pas, Manitoba.
When I lived in Berkeley, CA, I lived on “The Alameda”. It was listed in map indexes under “T”.
Berkeley had a couple of other streets that started with “The”, but “The Alameda” actually is a fairly big street.
There are numerous Spanish place names with “La”, “El”, etc. in them.
Nobody seems to get too worked up over “Los Angeles”.
Let me correct a couple of the french spellings:
Le Denmark, les Etats-Unis.
As to how the gender is determined, I think in general the “words ending in a silent e are feminine” rule is followed. Of course, there are exceptions, e.g. le Zaïre.
The name of the Sudan in Arabic comes from sûd ‘black people’, the plural of aswad, ‘black’. With the suffix -ân it becomes a double plural in form – how odd. al- is the definite article.
How the French language determines the gender of countries may be a bit arbitrary sometimes. But it isn’t an issue in Arabic: the names of nations (and tribes) are always feminine.
We were both wrong: le Danemark. 
(Damn those silent letters in French!)
I remember from school (waaay back) my French teacher said that the male/female thing for country names had something to do with recently established or not. (Recently established = male.) And then she immediately gave Denmark as an exception.
dtilque:
Sorry about that. You did say names. As far as The Dalles is concerned, the French equivalent would be Les Dalles.
You’ve just ruined my day. I’ve lived in the USA too long, and can’t spell in french anymore! 
Not to worry, Arnold. In your country alone, you’ve got three other languages to choose from 
Plus, you seem to handle English pretty adequately as well. Who needs French?
Simply means “The Peninsula”-Chersonese is Greek for peninsula. I’ve seen Chersonese used to refer to the Gallipoli Peninsula, the Crimean Peninsula and the Malay Peninsula.
The official name is Republic of the Gambia. It takes its name from The Gambia River. Look at a map of the nation- it is pretty much the Gambia River and about 10-15 miles on each bank.
Why “la France” and all the others “le” or “les”?
I think to remember that because France would be their mother country (female) while the others are either male or multiples …
just my 2 cents …
We say case in English, for what Germans call a fall. Coldfire, can you remind me of the order in which the cases are supposed to be recited? Is the fourth case accusative or dative? And, since I studied a little
Netherlandish at one time, could you give an example of
a fourth case marking in the language?
In this regard I’m not sure one country has the “right” to insist that speakers of another language use or not use an article. After all, the French say “La France”, but they don’t ask that we say “The France”. Dropping the article from country names seems to be an increasing trend. “Congo” is another example. To be frank, saying just “Congo” or “Ukraine” sounds simply wrong, like MIT linguist Noam Chomsky’s famous example Furiously sleep dreams green colorless" (as opposed to Colorless green dreams sleep furiously, which sounds grammatically correct to English speakers even though it is just as nonsensical as
the first sentence).
Does this have anything to do with
Des Moines
Des Plaines (sp)
Both in Iowa, I believe.
Any educated person, thank you very much. (See novels by Jane Austen.)
Yes, I forgot to ask about the Crimea, and now I know it is because it is a peninsula, ie., the Crimea(n) Peninsula.
Although they don’t say the Koala. And then there is The Borg, those awful cyborgs living in a huge cube that Seven of Eleven was freed from, thank goodness!
Since there was so much in this thread about case, I just found out that Finnish has five locative cases besides all its other cases, such as the usual genitive, etc. I always wondered why do they have us learn five cases in Latin when there is also a sixth one called the vocative and ends in e, as when you address someone. When Caesar addressed Brutus, he said, "Et tu, Brute," putting the e on. Or alternatively, since the dative and the ablative are almost always the same, why not just have a "dablative" case, eg., we have amicus, amici, amicO dative, amicum, amicO ablative. It works in the plural too, because the ablative and dative plurals are -is for neuter and masculine and feminine, which is all there is!Also, the genitive singular is the same as the nominative plural for all three genders in the first declension. I don't remember the other declensions. People also speak of learning the Latin or the Greek or the French, meaning the Latin LANGUAGE, etc.wHOOPS, i JUST REALIZED the Borg are the Borg because they are the cyborgs! Thus answering my own question!!!
I’ll give it a go.
OK, the order in which the German Cases should be recited. I will do this by example, as I do not fully understand the “accusative” (fourth, right?) and “dative” tags.
First Case: Der Wagen faehrt schnell. (The car drives fast.)
Second Case: Das Rad des Wagens ist kaput. (The cars tire is broken.)
Third Case: Ich bin mit dem Wagen gekommen. (I came by car.)
Fourth Case: Ich habe den Wagen verkauft. (I have sold the car.)
I used a male noun (“der Wagen”) because it illustrates the cases best. However, conjugating female and neutral nouns is different.
The Fourth Case in Dutch:
While still in use, this case does not imply a grammar change anymore. This was the case in Middle Dutch, though.
Now, it’s something like this schedule:
First Case: De auto rijdt snel. (The car drives fast.)
Second Case: Het wiel des autos is kapot. (The cars tire is broken.) This is extremely archaic, and this case is only used in sayings, legislation, proverbs, etc. Normally, one would say “Het wiel van de auto is kapot”, (The wheel of the car is broken).
Third Case: non-existant in modern Dutch.
Fourth Case: Ik heb de auto verkocht. (I have sold the car.) As you can see, no change to the noun and its surroundings 
(Yes, for lack of a better word. What does one call “the”, “a”, “and”?)
Whew. I hope that helps a bit. Let’s hope all the tags work. Thank goodness I’m a mod now. I can edit them to perfection
Thanks, Fire.
I should point out that by ‘marking’ I meant a change in the noun itself, and not merely the article or context. To the best of my memory German marks the fourth case (accusative) only for words such as Junge and Mensch:
[ul]
[li]Nominative: der Junge, der Mensch[/li][li]Genitive : des Jungens, des Menschens[/li][li]Dative : dem Jungen, dem Menschen[/li][li]Accusative: den Jungen, den Menschen[/li][/ul]
A far greater number of German nouns, mostly masculine and neuter, have dative marking, but no accusative marking. However, I believe that even the dative marking is obsolescent, except in poetic or very formal situations:
[ul]
[li]Nom: der Freund, das Land[/li][li]Gen: des Frendes, des Landes[/li][li]Dat: dem Freunde, dem Lande[/li][li]Acc: den Freund, das Land[/li]
If there are any native German speakers out there, could you
help clear this up? Is the dative marking in words like
Freunde above disappearing? My impression was that it is becoming obsolete, but my memories on the subject are
also obsolescent.
[/ul]