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Comment by davidmr | Hacker News Reader

Apropos of nothing, the proper anglicized name of the country is The Gambia, which along with The Bahamas, are the only two countries whose official names include "The".

Obviously Reuters knows what they're doing and I'm sure adhere quite strictly to their popular style guide, so I find it interesting that their editors omit the "The". I wonder why.

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I can't tell what they mean here, but: http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php?title=G#Gambia

"Gambia: Not the Gambia, West Africa"

Sounds like they are specifically not calling it the T/the Gambia, for whatever reason.

I'm not sure it is official, but http://www.un.org/en/member-states/ disagrees.

The only country name starting with "The" on that list is "The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia".

It lists Gambia as "Gambia (Islamic Republic of the)" so, according to tHat list, at best, it is "Islamic Republic of the Gambia" (no capital T on 'the')

They are actually both right. Most state's have a short name and long name. The Gambia is one of the few with "The" in the short form, but many have it as part of the long form.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

I'm not sure where these "conventional short form" names come from, but it's also the primary source for wikipedia titles.

And we had The Ukraine before it dropped the article, for whatever reason. I like the slightly jarring "The" in front of those countries' names. Gives them a little something extra, grammatically.

There's a Wikipedia article devoted to Ukraine's name: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine

In short, Ukrainian has no definite article, unlike English. Ukraine officially dropped 'the' from the English translation of the country's name after independence. Some Ukrainians find the use of 'the' somewhat insulting as it is the Soviet-era translation and disregards the Ukrainian government translation.

People from Gambia call it Gambia. I suppose they won't feel offended. Maybe the styleguide is just too strict. Or maybe Gambia never heard of it.

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