The only two countries that officially have the definite article are The Gambia and The Bahamas, says Becky Maddock of the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (PCGN), which advises the UK Government on “the proper writing” of place names.

“We do have a letter dated May 1964 from the Gambian prime minister’s office which instructed us that it should be The Gambia with a capital T. One of the reasons they gave was that Gambia could be confused with Zambia, which was a new name to the international community at the time.”

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