"The" Philippines

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>... I believe that they should be capitalized always, also, as in "The
>Netherlands" and "The Philippines".

I'm not sure I'm understanding this correctly, but I don't believe that it
is usual to routinely capitalize "the" in these names.

Neither nation's government uses capitalized "the" routinely in its name at
its official English-language Web-site: they say respectively <<About the
Philippines>> and << Welcome to the Netherlands>> for example.

Of course "the" is capitalized if it is at the beginning of a sentence.

-- Doug Wilson