CORRECT ENGLISH GRAMMAR Country Names SHORTS

Somehow we ended up in my bathroom again 
for another English lesson. So several  

country names have the word ‘the’ with them.
We have The United Kingdom, which which is  

short for ‘The United Kingdom on Great Britain 
and Northern Ireland’ but we usually have the ‘The UK’. 

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 the country names that 
officially have ‘the’. But there are a  

few more countries where we 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 Indoonesia’, even though Indonesia 
is also a country made up of a bunch of islands.