So several country names have the word the with them we have the United Kingdom which is short for the United Kingdom of great Britain and Northern Ireland.

But we usually have the the U.

K.

We have the United States.

We also have the Netherlands.

We have the Bahamas and finally we have the Gambia all the way over here.

Now those are all of the country names that officially have the, but there are a few more countries where we'll often add the for example the Philippines and the Maldives, Maldives, Philippines.

Now why do we say the with those countries?

It's probably related to the fact that it's a collection of islands.

Having said that we don't say the Indonesia, even though Indonesia is also a country made up of a bunch of islands.