Usually, we do not use the definite article, the, before names of countries but we use the before "United States of America".
Is there a specific reason for using the article before the country "United States of America"?
asked Sep 15, 2013 at 1:23
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3 Answers
The is used in front of countries that have:
plural names:
the Netherlandsa general geo-political noun of place, e.g. republic, emirate, kingdom, state:
the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom.
On a related note, see this post on the capitalization of articles in names:
You only capitalize The when it is the first word in a title of book or a play. . . . In contrast, the word the is not normally capitalized in front of proper nouns that aren’t titles, like . . . the United States of America. . . .
Most country names are only a single word, or might include a geographical description (eg North Korea, South Korea).
The United States of America is plural. It means The States of America which are united. You cannot use States without The.
Other examples are:
The United Kingdom
The United Arab Emirates
The Netherlands (literally the Low Lands, also known as Holland)
Groups of islands also take The:
The Phillippines
The Azores
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RE: "You cannot use States without The." That sounds overly restrictive to me; there are a few contexts where a "the" wouldn't be required, such as United States Postal Service, or a newspaper headline such as United States Moves Forward On Health Care, or a sentence like A 2010 United States census showed a modest increase in longevity.– J.R.Sep 15, 2013 at 5:25
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2@J.R. In your examples United States is either an adjective or a headline, and headlines don't follow normal rules of sentence structure. OP is asking about the name of the country, a noun.– MynamiteSep 15, 2013 at 19:41
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"The Netherlands (literally the Low Lands, also known as Holland)". Known as Holland, admittedly, but Holland is to the Netherlands what Ontario is to Canada. North and South Holland are 2 of the 12 provinces of the Netherlands. Neither Eindhoven nor Maastricht are in Holland for instance.– minsNov 1, 2021 at 13:40
Using 'the' for a country name is a bit unpredictable.
As a guideline, country names that describe a physical geographic feature use 'the'. A group of islands, a river, or a mountain rage. For comparison, think of other geographical features such as the Sahara or the Amazon. Country names that describe a political features also use 'the'. This is usually a republic, or a political union - The United Kingdom or The United States of America.
The unpredictability comes when geographic or political features are unclear or forgotten. Lebanon is named after a mountain range, Sudan after a desert, Gambia after a river, and Ukraine = 'borderland', but none of those normally use a definite article.
answered Sep 15, 2013 at 5:14
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Though the form "the Ukraine" was once the more common term in English, it has become less accepted after the Ukrainian government officially requested that the article be dropped in 1993, shortly after independence. Most sources have since dropped the article in favour of simply "Ukraine". - Ukraine on Wikipedia Sep 15, 2013 at 5:17
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That is why I said "... and Ukraine = 'borderland', but none of those normally use a definite article." I think the use of a definite article in English might be a legacy from the Soviet era "The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic", but it is only a hunch. I have been told that Germans still use a definite article with Ukraine? Sep 15, 2013 at 5:30