This is "The" Place
Countries and Other Creatures that are "The"

"I mean, really, the Crimea! And why is it always the Crimea? Explain that to me!"
"I think it's like the Balkans," said Omar.
"Well, that makes sense," said Deirdre. "That makes perfect sense: the Balkans. Because there are several Balkans, there are many Balkans. But there is only one Crimea, I think."

When the Soviet Union fell apart, the Ukraine came into the news. And the same NPR reporters who had annoyingly started dropping the "the" from "the United States" began to do the same to "the Ukraine". Mysteriously, presidents went to "Ukraine" now. I had to admit that I had less to complain about. Supposedly, "Ukraine" means "border" in some language, so it might have made sense to call it the Ukraine...if we were speaking that language, but we aren't - so goodbye the Ukraine and be done with it. (President Bush's advisers insisted that he speak of "Ukraine", suggesting a country, rather than "the Ukraine", suggesting a geographic region, as a sop to the incipient nationalists of the as-yet-unformed new country.)

This definite article business isn't confined to English, either. I know, for instance, that in German, although most countries have "normal" names, Switzerland is "die Schweiz" and Turkey is "die Turkei".

There are a handful of countries that have a "the" preprended to their names, or did so historically:

• the Argentine, a traditional English name for Argentina;
• the Belgian Congo; the Congo;
• the Brazils;
• the Bukovina, a territory now divided between Romania and Moldavia;
• the Cameroons;
• the Canadas, the name for Upper Canada and Lower Canada, two original British colonies, which were united in 1841.
• the Comoros, an Indian Ocean archipelago;
• the Gambia is a country named after the river that it closely follows; the "the" in its name seems more natural when seen as derived from the river, since we typically refer to rivers in this way.
• the Hejaz, a region in the western part of the Arabian peninsula, between the Red Sea and a chain of mountains, which includes the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina;
• the Ivory Coast, whose inhabitants are known as Ivoirians;
• the Lebanon;
• the Netherlands, whose name comes from "The Low Lands";
• the Palatinate;
• the Regat, a region constituting the old kingdom of Romania, comprising Wallachia and Moldavia.
• el Salvador;
• the Sudan;
• [the Kingdom of] the Two Sicilies;
• the Ukraine;
• the Vatican;
• the Yemen;

Some names that include a "the" are less puzzling, because we can explain them as being part of a phrase:

• the Czech Republic;
• the Danemark, the "Danish March", that is, the borderland inhabited by Danes;
• the Entity, the euphemistic term for those who prefer not to say "Israel";
• the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, for a while officially called FYROM to avoid offending the Greeks;
• the Malagasy Republic;
• the Maritime(s) provinces of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island;
• the Philippines, more properly, the Philippine Islands, named for King Philip of Spain;
• (the Kingdom of) the two Sicilies;
• the Union of South Africa;
• the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics;
• the United Arab Emirates;
• the United Arab Republic;
• the United Kingdom, more properly, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland...note that Scotland and Wales get folded into the "Great Britain" part;
• the United States of America;
• the West Bank;
• the Yemen;

There is an assortment of islands, for many of which the final "Island" of the name is typically dropped:

• the Azores;
• the Bahamas;
• the Bermudas;
• the Canaries, named, actually, for dogs, not canaries!
• the Cyclades;
• the Fijis (a name used at one time);
• the Friendly Isles;
• the Hebrides and the new Hebrides;
• the Indians, an archipelago of uninhabited islands in the British Virgin Islands;
• the Maldives, a nation of 1200 islands, only 200 of them inhabited, and all of them likely to disappear if the ocean rises;
• the Moluccas;
• the Mouls;
• the Mumbles, two islands a few miles from Swansea, South Wales;
• the Scillies, or the Isles of Scilly, lie off the southwestern tip of England;
• the Seychelles;
• the Solomons;
• St Vincent and the Grenadines;
• the Windwards;

And while we're at it, there are a few places that aren't countries, but for which the "the" is a little puzzling:

• the Algarve, Arabic al-gharb, the west, the southernmost region of Portugal;
• the Allegash or Allagash, a wilderness in northern Maine.
• the Amanas, a term for seven vilages in Iowa that form the (extinct) Amana utopian colony and current tourist trap;
• the Amboys, the cities of Perth Amboy and South Amboy, in New Jersey.
• the Angle or the Northwest Angle is a small piece of Minnesota that lies above the 49th parallel, and is only reachable from the US by crossing the Lake of thw Woods. It represents the most northerly part of the United States outside of Alaska.
• the Antilebanon (the Bekaa valley in Lebanon lies between two mountain ranges, the Lebanon and ...the Antilebanon. Here, the "anti" has the sense of "against" or "across from"!);
• the Arrowhead, the northeastern corner of Minnesota.
• the Backs, an area of Cambridge, England where several university colleges have their backs on the river Cam.
• the Badlands, an arid, treeless, eroded region in North and South Dakota, with spectacular contrasts of soil color and geologic formations.
• the Banat, a region in the Balkans that includes parts of Romania, Serbia and Hungary, around the town of Timisoara;
• the Bath, how Bath, England, was often referred to up to the 19th century. It is, of course, the site of a famous Roman bath.
• the Bottle, Alabama, is named for a bright orange wooden replica of a Nehi bottle that stood there from 1924 to 1933 (when it burned down). The town that grew up there, about five miles from Auburn, retains the name;
• the Bottom, a major town of the Netherlands Antilles;
• the Broads, named for the wide shallow lakes, is a wetland area of Norfolk and Suffolk, England;
• the Bronx, one of the five boroughs that constitute New York City, derives its name from a farm that once stood there, owned by the Bronck family;
• the Bund, a district in Shanghai, along the western bank of the Huangpu river, an area containing many buildings and wharves associated with the former International Settlement area;
• the Cape (of Good Hope), at the tip of South Africa;
• the Camargue, a region of France in the Rhone delta;
• the Carnatic. a region of southern India between the Eastern Ghats (!) and the Coromadel Coast;
• the Carolinas ("Now why are there two Carolinas?" a friend of mine from Romania asked...;
• the Chaco, a disputed area in South America;
• the (English) Channel, or, in French, La Manche;
• the Cheviots, a range of hills in Northumberland;
• the Cinque Ports, five English ports on the English Channel, namely Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich. These ports have had a special charter since at least 1260, giving them special rights, in return for supplying the crown with the use of a certain number of ships for up to 15 days a year, either in warfare, or for transporting the King back and forth to Normandy;
• the City, the traditional designation for the heart of London, which has a separate legal existence;
• the Colony, a town in Texas;
• the Cotswolds, an area of England;
• the Crimea or the Crimean (Peninsula);
• the Dakotas, the area of North and South Dakota;
• the Dales, an upland area of many valleys (dales) in northern England;
• the Dalles, Oregon, named by the French-Canadian employees of the Hudson's Bay Company for the flagstones ("dalle") in the nearby narrows of the Columbia river;
• the Dardanelles aka the Hellespont (the sea of Helle) is a long and narrow strait, connecting the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara.
• the Debatable Lands, an area between Scotland and England whose ownership was constantly disputed and fought over, and often an essentially lawless and ungoverned area, until the accession of James Stuart to the English throne united the two countries. In 1551, raids by clansmen in the Debatable Lands were so annoying that a proclamation was made: "All Englishmen and Scottishmen, after this proclamation made, are and shall be free to rob, burn, spoil, slay, murder and destroy all and every such persons, their bodies, buildings, goods and cattle as do remain or shall inhabit upon any part of the said Debatable Land without any redress to be made for the same."
• the Deccan, the central plateau region of India;
• the Deepings, describing a low lying area of England and a collection of towns and villages there (Market Deeping, Deeping Gate, Deeping St James, Deeping St Nicholas, West Deeping). The Deepings are including in the parliamentary constituency known as South Holland and the Deepings.
• the Devizes, as the town Devizes used to be known, was named because it divided the property of two landowners.
• the Dobruja, a strip of land in Romania that lies between the Danube (as it flows north before flowing east) and the Black Sea; this territory was disputed between Romania and Bulgaria;
• the Downs, two huge chalk formations in southern England, separated by the Weald;
• the Driftless Area aka the Driftless Region or the Driftless Zone, is a rugged region of Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota which was unique in not being covered by the continental glaciers of the most recent Ice Age.
• the Dukeries, an area of Nottinghamshire in England, within the boundaries of which, at one time, where homes and properties associated with the Dukes of Portland, Newcastle, Norfolk, Leeds, and Kingston.
• the Eastern Ghats and the Western Ghats of India, ranges of mountains along the east and west coasts of India;
• El Paso, the town in Texas, whose name means "the pass" in Spanish;
• the Elephant, aka the Elephant and Castle, is a major traffic intersection in London, deriving its name from that of a nearby coaching inn so old that Shakespeare mentioned it.
• the Elephantine, a massive pachydermic rock formation on the Nile;
• the Empty Quarter, a huge desert in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula;
• the Epirus, a region on the boundary between Greece and Albania;
• the Escarpment, a line of bluffs that mark a geologic boundary; there is the Niagara Escarpment in North America, and there is a similar feature in England;
• the Faiyum, an ancient oasis area south of Cairo;
• the Floridas, were the two parts of Florida; West Florida's capital was Pensacola, while East Florida's capital was St Augustine.
• the Franche-Comte, once part of the kingdom of Burgundy; it was separated and made subject to the Holy Roman Empire when the rest of Burgundy was absorbed into France. Later, when a count successfully resisted paying homage to the emperor, he became a "free count" (franc-Comte), and his territory acquired the name of the Franche-Comte or "free county";
• the Fulda Gap was, during the Cold War, viewed as a likely path for a Soviet invasion of West Germany. Fulda was a town near a wide expanse of smooth terrain, allowing for a broad and extensive tank assault.
• the Gold Coast, the colonial name for what is now the African country of Ghana;
• the Goodwins or the Goodwin Sands, a shallow sandy area in the English Channel, east of Deal, responsible for many shipwrecks, including that of one of Antonio's ships in The Merchant of Venice;
• the Gorbals, the notorious slum area of Glasgow, on the south bank of the river Clyde, founded in the 14th century and gradually becoming a crowded area full of the poor, unemployed, displaced Highlanders, Irish, and immigrant Jews;
• la Habana, what they call Havana in Spanish;
• la Paz, officially "Nostra Senora de La Paz" or "Our Lady of Peace";
• the Hadhramaut, a region in Southern Arabia;
• the Hague, which in Dutch is den Haag, and which comes from an old name "des Graven Hage" or "the count's hedge", when it was a hunting area for a count;
• the Hamptons, a summer resort area on the eastern end of Long Island, informally named for common suffix of many of the local towns, including Westhampton, East Hampton, Southampton, Hampton Bays and Bridgehampton.
• the Heads, a cape off the coast of Oregon, or two large headlands on the coast of South Africa that form a lagoon.
• the Hindu Kush, a mountain range in Afghanistan and parts of northern Pakistan
• the Hook of Holland, a village on the southwest coast of Holland.
• the Horn (of Africa);
• the (East) Indies and the West Indies;
• the Iron Gates, a gorge on the Danube River, between Serbia and Romania, which constitutes a significant obstacle to shipping.
• the Ivory Coast;
• the Jersies: at one time, there were North, South and West Jersey, now all just plain New Jersey;
• the Jura, an area of France near Switzerland, named after the Jura mountains, historically part of the free county (Franche-Comte) of Burgundy, many of whose inhabitants spoke a dialect of Franco-Provencal, and an area known for its wines;
• the Karoo, a dusty grassland region in South Africa;
• the Karst, the barren limestone hinterlands of Trieste, which gave its name to "karst";
• the Kuban, a region near the Crimea, through which the Kuban river flows;
• Lehavre, literally "The Harbor", a port city in France.
• the Levant, an area of the Middle East that includes Lebanon and its neighbors; its name is derived from Latin for "the rising", that is, the East, the direction in which the sun rises.
• the Liberties, outer parts of London, Dublin and other cities, which were granted certain "liberties";
• the Lizard, where the coast of England points into the Channel;
• Los Angeles, originally "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles", or "The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels"; There are many more towns in the American Southwest whose names begin with "Los" or "Las" and hence qualify as "the" towns, but we hesitate to list them all.
• the Maghreb, a region of northwest Africa;
• the Mani, a peninsula in the Peloponnese;
• the Marches, the borderlands between England and Scotland;
• the Marches, the borderlands between England and Wales;
• the Marches, or "Le Marche" in Italian, is a region in Italy; its name derives from the fact that at one time it was a march, or borderland, of the Holy Roman Empire.
• the Midi is a term for the southern region of France;
• the Minches are two straits (the North Minch and the Lower Minch) off the coast of Scotland separating the inner and outer Hebrides Islands.
• the Minories is a street and district in London. The name derives from the word "minoress", meaning a nun, and recalls a nunnery that once stood on the site;
• the Missouri Breaks, the title of a western movie in which Marlon Brando dresses as a woman, is not in the state of Missouri, but in Montana, in the headwaters of the Missouri river, where a series of bluffs, rocky outcroppings, and grassy plains form a distinctive landscape;
• the Morea, or the Morea Peninsula, a name used in the Middle Ages for the region of the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece; when governed by the Byzantines, the province was known as the Despotate of Morea.
• the Mosquito Coast;
• the Needles, three chalk ridges that rise out of the sea, on the western end of the Isle of Wight. There was once a fourth chalk pillar, as well, sometimes called Lot's wife, whose shape gave rise to the name "Needles", but which collapsed into the ocean in 1764.
• the Nore, a sandbank at the mouth of the Thames; the British fleet, anchored near the Nore, mutinied in 1797;
• the Northern Shield or Canadian Shield is a huge geologic formation, rougly circular in shape, that is some of the oldest rock in North America.
• The Northwest Angle, a bit of US territory, part of the state of Minnesota, that juts above the 48th parallel into Canada. It is isolated from the US by the Lake of the Woods, and so can only be reached by boat, unless one goes through Canada. Its existence is due to a misunderstanding when the US-Canadian border was designated.
• the Nut, a promontory hill that juts into the ocean at Stanley, Tasmania;
• the Oaze;
• the O C, Orange County, California, a fabled land of the idle rich.
• the Occident, the west, western countries, western culture, as opposed to the Orient; the name derives from the Latin for "going down", that is, the direction in which the sun sets;
• the Olgas, a group of monolithic rocks in Australia's Northwest Territory;
• the Orange Free State, a region, now part of South Africa, between the Orange and Vaal rivers, that was settled and claimed by the Boers in the second half of the nineteenth century, until it was defeated by the British in the Boer Wars and absorbed into what was then termed the Union of South Africa.
• the Orient;
• the Outer Banks, a chain of barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina;
• the Owers, a group of rocks and ledges off the tip of Selsey Bill in England.
• the Palisades, a line of steep cliffs along the Hudson river;
• the Panhandle, refers to ``necks'' of territory that seem to stick out from the main bodies of the states of Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Maryland, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia; if you wish to cause trouble, refer to the resident of such an area as "panhandlers"!
• the Partium, an isolated north-eastern corner of Hungary that eluded the Ottoman conquest.
• the Peloponessus or the Peloponnese, the lower Greek peninsula;
• the Piedmont, the area of the eastern United States between the coastal plain and the Appalachian mountains.
• the Pilbara, a region of Western Australia;
• the Piraeus, the port city of Athens;
• the Plains, Virginia.
• the Pontus, the region of northeastern Turkey near the Black Sea, colonized in ancient times by the Greeks;
• the Pool, a wide navigable region of the river Thames between London Bridge and Limehouse, where ships once docked.
• the Potteries, or the Staffordshire Potteries is a name for the towns of Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton, which now constitute the single city of Stoke-on-Trent, getting its name from the concentration of potteries attracted by the local abundance of the resources needed for ceramics.
• the Punjab, also spelled "Panjab" which suggests its meaning of "five waters", is a region on the border between India and Pakistan.
• the Rann of Kutch, a salt marsh between the gulf of Kutch and the Indus river delta;
• the Regat, the extent of the Kingdom of Romania before World War I.
• the Regno, literally, in Italian, the "Kingdom", this term has been used by historians when denoting the Italian portion of the Holy Roman Empire;
• the Rhineland;
• the Rip Raps, an artificial island in the harbor at Hampton Roads, Virginia;
• the Riviera, which is Italian for "seashore";
• the Saar, a region of Germany, containing the Saar river, occupied by French troops after World Wars I and II;
• the Saints, "Every couple of miles there is a hamlet, and without exception these hamlets are named for the patron saints of their churches: St Mary and St Michael, St Peter, St James and St Andrew, St Lawrence, St John and St Cross, and as a result the people living there call the entire area The Saints", W G Sebald, 'The Rings of Saturn'.
• the Sandzak or Sanjac, a region of Serbia, near Kosovo; In the Ottoman empire, a sanjak was simply a province, and this area was known as the Sanjac of Novi Pazar. Eventually, its name was shortened by usage. The Sandzak was a political prize in the late 19th century, coveted by the Hapsburg empire and by Serbia.
• the Serpentine, a lake in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, London, formed by damming a river, and named for its twisting, snakelike shape;
• the Shambles, a dangerous sandbank off the coast of Portland, England, long marked by a lightship, and now by automatic buoys.
• the Sinai [Peninsula];
• the Slashes, an area of Virginia between the Tidewater and the Piedmont, consisting of low swampy lands.
• the Slave Coast, the coast of Africa now occupied by Togo, Dahomey, and western Nigeria, which was at one time a major export center for slaves.
• the Sleeve, the entrance to the English Channel;
• the Smalls, a rocky reef west of Wales, with a lighthouse;
• the Solent, a strait between the Isle of Wight and the mainland of England.
• the Southern Tier, the counties of New York beyond the Catskills, lying next to the Pennsylvania border.
• the Start, a promontory in Devon England, at the southern limit of Start Bay. The name "start" comes from an old English root meaning "tail".
• the Sudd, an impenetrable swamp from which the White Nile emerges;
• the Sudetenland, named for the Sudeten mountains, this region was transferred from Czechoslovakia to Germany, after the Munich conference, at which France and Great Britain put great pressure on the Czechs to yield to Hitler's demands.
• the Sunderbans, the area at the delta of the Ganges river, dotted with islands, mudbanks and tidal pools, patrolled by tigers, forming a huge mangrove forest.
• the Swale is a channel of the ocean between the English coastline at Kent and the isle of Sheppey;
• the Syvash, or "Rotten Sea" is a marshy region that joins (or separates) the Crimea from Ukraine.
• the Tappan Zee, a sort of lake formed by a natural widening of the Hudson river, named by the Dutch for the local Tappan tribe; "Zee" means "lake";
• the Texel, an island in the Netherlands, site of a naval battle during the third Anglo-Dutch war;
• the Thumb, the peninsular part of Michigan;
• the Tidewater, the portion of Virginia whose rivers are affected by the tide;
• the Transvaal, a region in South Africa that derives its name from the fact that it lies across the Vaal river.
• the Troad, an area of Asia Minor that includes the territory around Troy;
• the Tyrol, a mountainous region on the border between Austria and Italy. The South Tyrol is actually in Italy, and full of German-speakers, and even a graffitto that read "Hilft Sud Tirol! Spricht Deutsch!";
• the U.P., or Upper Peninsula, the small part of Michigan that adjoins Wisconsin, and is separated from the rest of Michigan.
• the Vaucluse, a region in southern France which includes the city of Avignon, whose name comes from the Latin for "closed valley".
• the Vendee, the region of France around the Vendee river, site of many battles during the Hundred Years War, home to many Huguenots until the Edict of Nantes, and the focus of a counter-revolutionary uprising in 1796.
• the Veneto, the region of Italy around Venice;
• the Wanni, a region of Sri Lanka, south of Jaffna;
• the Warp;
• the Wash, a huge indentation in the coast of England;
• the Weald, a wild, wooded area of southern England between the North Downs and the South Downs;
• the Western Approaches describes the area nearby, but to the west, of the British Isle, and was commonly used to describe the area of the most intense submarine activity during the second World War;
• the White Plains, was the original name of White Plains, New York.
• the Wilderness, in Virginia, site of a Civil War battle;
• the Wirral, a peninsula in northwest England;
• the Yucatan (Peninsula);
• the Yukon;
• the Zips, now known as Spiss, Slovakia;