I'm an old fart who learned in primary school that The Ukraine, along with several other countries like The Netherlands, The Philippines or The Congo, was spelled with "the" for some reason. The geography teacher never told us why. It was just the way it was.

And yes, now I'm older, I realize there are several Philippine islands and several nether lands, and The Congo is an outdated - possibly colonial - short for Democratic Republic of the Congo, and that DR Congo is more acceptable today.

And yes, I know it's Ukraine now, since Ukraine gained its independence. But I always thought the switch from The Ukraine to Ukraine-sans-the was a cutesy to mark the event.

So, childhood habits being what they are, I regularly kept calling it The Ukraine, and I thought it didn't matter all that much.

But today, I found this article, and it really brought the point home of why it's a lot more important than it seems!

I figured I'd share, for other English-speaking old farts who were never taught why the Ukraine SSR was spelled out with "the" and why it shouldn't be anymore.

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[–] Rose@lemmy.zip 4 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

The na construction is, however, still widely used in Russia.

From what I know, it wasn't until the 2014 invasion, making the change as political as the Russian media being instructed to refer to the Ukrainian government strictly as "the Kyiv regime" (though they'd probably spell it as Kiev).

[–] ExtremeDullard@piefed.social 8 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

though they’d probably spell it as Kiev

Oh yeah, that's another one I still do out of habit.
And Bombay
And Rangoon
And Calcutta
And Gorky
...

Funny how you learn a lot of stuff in school that becomes increasingly irrelevant and incorrect 🙂

[–] ODGreen@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 31 minutes ago)

All of those places aside from Gorky are the colonizer's version of the name. It's hard to unlearn but important to keep in mind the general rule: call a place by what the locals want you to call it, not by what the empire labeled it on a map.

I get it though, sometimes it's really hard. Squamish is a lot easier to type out than Sḵwx̱wú7mesh.

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

Every so often I still call it Constantinople! It's tough to dislodge some things we learn as children!

[–] MnemonicBump@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 21 hours ago

They'd probably spell it Киев