Why do people often refer to Ukraine as “the Ukraine”? When and why did this practice start? I have the same question about the Netherlands, only I’ve never seen someone correct someone else for saying “the” Netherlands. Is it supposed to be Netherlands or The Netherlands? When did that start as well?
Also, would it be correct to call them simply “Netherland”? Why the plural? I can’t think of another country that refers to itself in the plural
The United Kingdom
The United States?
The Philippines and the Maldives.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo
The United Arab Emirates
The Ukraine was always “the” Ukraine, until a few years ago, because it was a description of a geographical region rather than an independent country. Think “the Midwest” or “the Arctic”.
The Netherlands are written in the plural because they *are *plural - the country consists of several Netherlands, Holland being the most prominent.
The Seychelles?
The Gambia.
“The” is an official part of the name, to prevent confusion with Zambia.
“Netherlands” means “low-lying lands”
Much of the land that now makes up The Netherlands is below sea level, hence the name.
Article in in name, as commonly used - The Gambia.
Note that the plurals given above make a certain amount of sense - The Phillipines and the Maldives refer to island groups - there are multiple islands. The United States references the fact that the nation is a group of states under a federated government. “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” made sense until they weren’t, at least in applying the plural - one can quibble with “Republic(s)”, I suppose. The Netherlands was once a collection of largely autonomous provinces, which were eventually unified by the Hapsburgs.
The Sudan
The Congo
The Ukraine is East Slavic for “the Southlands” – and as such was the name applied by the Russians to their fertile southern provinces, where they spoke the related language “Little Russian” (as opposed to their western provinces, which were White Russia). (Granted Russian doesn’t use articles; most educated Russians spoke French, and many German and/or English as well, all of which do.)
Ukrainians, understandably miffed at being described only by parallel with Russia, pushed first for recognition of Ukrainian as a distinct language under that name, then, when the USSR broke up, for the national name in languages with articles to be simply “Ukrainia” or “Ukraine” without the article.
It makes for a useful distinction in English: The Ukraine is a physical-geography region that is mostly but not totally coterminous with the political nation Ukraine (no artcle).
The Canada.
teh USA! USA!
Perhaps in the case of the UK and the Seychelles it is because they are made up of several smaller areas. I mean that the UK consists of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the Seychelles and the Maldives are made up of lots of small islands. The same could be said for the United Arab Emirates and even the US to some extent.
And as for the Ukraine, as Alessan said above, I can only assume that that is because it was only ever a geographical region of the larger USSR. No idea on that though.
It’s also worth noting that again it was a physical-geography descriptor adopted for the nation. “The Netherlands” was the name given to the lowlying lands, just above sea level and eventually protected by dikes, located along the North Sea coast. After the Reformation and the Dutch Wars of Independence, they were divided into the (Protestant) United Provinces of the Netherlands and the (Catholic) Spanish Netherlands, later Austrian. Following the Napoleonic Wars they were reunited as the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but a struggle in 1830-39 led to the Catholic regions gaining separate independence as Beglium.
FWIW, Luxembourg is attached to the other two as it was historically a piece of the Holy Roman Empire under the rule of the House of Orange, in a union of crowns similar to England and Scotland 1603-1707. It gained effective independence in 1815, losing land to Prussia, lost half its land to Belgium in 1839, became de jure independent in 1866-7, and gained a separate monarch when the last Dutch king, Willem III, died in 1890.
Just wanted to add that the “The” before a name carries, for many, the taint of colonialist exoticizing. That’s one important reason that nations like Ukraine have discouraged use of the “the” – they want to sound more like modern, normal countries.
And some even transcend our planet:
The Big Dipper
The Crab Nebula
The Pleiades.
Former country, but The United Soviet Socialist Republics…
Actually, the Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics. And, at least according to wikipedia,the The is not officially part of the name as rendered in Russian Союз Советских Социалистических Республик.