"The" Philippines

[Dave Wilton]

> >... 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.

The US State Department does not capitalize these or other articles in
country names, with exceptions of "The Bahamas" and "The Gambia." Diplomats
tend to be sticklers about matters or protocol like this;
http://www.state.gov/s/inr/rls/4250.htm

--Dave Wilton
  dave at wilton.net
  http://www.wilton.net