Dominican Republic - which is it?

[winkywinkola]

Is it just Dominican Republic?

Or The Dominican Republic with a capital T?

Or the Dominican Republic with a lower case t?

I googled it, got the official DR Ministry of Tourism (so it claims) and they say "Dominican Republic" with no article in front. So, historically, I'm sure people put a the or The in front, but these days they choose not to.

Google News shows mixed results, but the Guardian avoids "The", presumably rejecting the colonialist / imperialist usage of the past and recognising the DR's self-determining right to specify it's own name...

This is equally as grating as people who refer to 'the' Ukraine!

People used the say The Lebanon and The Argentine as well. And then it just seemed to fall out of use. We still say the UK and the US. Am going to be thinking of more examples now...

In Spanish it's República Dominicana, which kind of sounds like it can manage without the definite article more easily, even though of course Spanish has one. Meanwhile Hindi doesn't, so no-one thinks of saying "The Uttar Pradesh", even though it means exactly the same as "The Northern Territory" in Australia, where allegedly English is spoken. It's a fascinating international quandry...

As well as that I realise that my Irish friends refer to "The Republic" when they are talking about their homeland with a bit more seriousness or reverence, in the same way that French ones, when feeling the hand of the revolution on their shoulders, talk about "La France". And we had a couple of American friends staying here this week who would occasionally lapse into talking about "America", when they weren't bigging the place up. So maybe it's all to do with how serious you want your country to sound.

It sounds a bit odd to say, for example, "He is from Dominican Republic". I would be inclined to use a lower case 'the'.