And … as in English, there are epithentic vowels involved. In Russian speech, that “v” flows into sentences with ease when followed by a super-brief schwa. Just like the schwa that actually gets spelled with an “e” in English “houses”
What?
No. The name of the band is The Who, with capitalization.
I don’t know.
…help The Iraq and The Asian Countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.
Vinyl fans may be aware of ‘The Pink Floyd’.
‘Yugoslavia’ meant ‘South Slavia’ or something similar. Are the first syllables cognate?
Speaking of The Netherlands, why is the city there called “The Hague”? I can’t readily think of another city with an article.
That explains a lot. A guy who works for me is Russian and when I edit his documentation I always have to add articles in places where he leaves them out.
No, The Guess Who.
There used to be “The Bronx,” but the Postal Service now insists on just “Bronx,” I think.
He’s very good!
Just saw this thread today, so I have a little catching up to do.
The name Ukraine is derived roughly from the East Slavic word “edge” or “border” – not “south”.* Hence one can rationalize the preposition на, rather than в, since you’re “on” a border rather than “in” it. (Not that all choices where the preposition is concerned are logical, or easily rationalized, mind you; sorry to break it to you, Crescend. 
)
The terms “Little Russian” and “White Russian” bely a very Moscow-centric view of history, I am compelled to add. Ukraine and Belarus have had a long and interesting past, not all of it under the thumb of Russia. Our lay terminology in English for those lands and languages arrived through the intermediary of imperial Russia and should be laid to rest. Moreover, I also want to point out that Ukraine did enjoy a brief moment of independence during WWI before being incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922.
The dropping of the noun article “the” before the English name of the country was a post-1991 gesture to make a conceptual break between the Soviet republic and the independent state. Despite Ukrainian and Russian not having noun articles, they’re certainly aware of their existence in English and have opinions about whether they should be used. And modern Ukrainian now favors “в Украïни” rather than “на Украïни”.
Finally, on the pronunciation of the preposition в, there is in fact no epenthetic vowel inserted between it and a single word-initial consonant (sorry bordelond). This is evidenced by the fact that you get regressive voice assimilation of the preposition; e.g., before voiceless consonants the в is devoiced to [f]. This devoicing would not happen in the presence of an intervening vowel.
You do get an epenthetic vowel if the following word starts with a consonant cluster; it is spelled in the orthography: во вторник ‘on Tuesday (Russian)’.
*Scheidt-Hoch, you’re correct, the Slavic root for “south” is jug-
Apparently, Pet Shop Boys prefer to write their name without an article, but they use the article in speech (e.g. at concerts) and in the song “We’re the Pet Shop Boys” (which amazingly enough is a cover).
I think it’s just one of those accidents: it’s one of the few city names with a definite article in another language (Den Haag) that gets translated into English (and other languages: La Haye, L’Aia…). Other names with articles - Le Mans, Le Havre, L’Aquila, or for that matter Los Angeles and Las Vegas - get left in the original language.
A few other well-known cities have exceptional articles in other languages that don’t occur in English, such as Le Caire (Cairo), La Mecque (Mecca), and Le Pirée (Piraeus) in French.
FWIW, there’s also The Pas, Manitoba, and The Dalles, Oregon.
Dar es Salaam?
Was it ever called the Transjordan? How about the Levant?
None of them had a third bass!
Thanks for the correction and expansion – I’d been given to understand (by a Russian emigré family) that the meaning was something like “Southmarch” (with -march in the ‘borderlands’ sense). Apparently I remembered the wrong half of why they were giving me that example. And, of course, by mentioning “Little Russian” I was intentionally showing the Ukrainians making the point of distinguishing their nation, language, and culture from a Moscow-centric viewpoint and nomenclature.
Oh, good point. Cairo has the article in the traditional Arabic name, Al Qahira.
Sould we be saying ‘Ukrainia’ rather than ‘Ukraine’ then?
I also remember hearing ‘Czechia’ instead of ‘the Czech Republic’ after Czechoslovakia split up, but that doesn’t seem to have stuck in English. Which is odd, sonce we say ‘Slovakia’ without problem.
And The Soo! 
“The Iraq”?
Well, more properly, it would likely be “The Whom”… 
Don’t the British sometimes refer to Agentina as “The Argentine”?