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New Zealand has a North and a South Island. These seem to be their names, as they are capitalized even on Wikipedia.
I am pretty sure it should be "we go to the North Island", and not "we go to North Island", as this is what they write in their newspapers, and also on Wikipedia. But... I need to explain why, and I cannot find the reason.
Grammarly corrects this one wrong to "[...] bad weather in North Island." (see also). Does anyone have a kind of official reference to reasoning?
It is not at all uncommon in English (and other languages) for established regions of countries to be prefixed with a definite article.
See:
and many more examples.
In this instance, the North Island is being given a definite article to indicate that it is a known, established region of New Zealand and not just any small island within the territory of New Zealand.
Incidentally, for those who have wondered but have never known the definitive answer, this is why it's important to say Ukraine and not the Ukraine.
The Ukraine was a known, established "borderland" region of Romanov-ruled Imperial Russia. Due to inertia as much as anything else, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic continued to be referred to as the Ukraine.
But the post-1991, independent country, isn't any sort of region within any sort of Russian Empire.
That's why it is Ukraine (without a definite article).
Naming is highly ideosyncratic. While there are some common patterns, there are also many exceptions, and this is one of them.
You can't usually identify reasons for the exceptions, they just happen out of tradition. There are no hard rules to it.
It's similar to nation names. They aren't usually preceded by "The", but there are exceptions like The Netherlands, The Vatican, and The United States of America.
Speaking as a NZer, it's the North Island simply because it's a descriptive label... out of the two main islands that make up the country, it's the northern one. And likewise the South Island being the southern one.
The real question is why the name is capitalized. It's not a name with any political or administrative significance, just a label for the geographic entities. But given the significance of the two main Islands as opposed to the many little islands around the country, it gets capitalized because we're talking about the North Island, not just some other island that's north of another. And in that sense, it's formally recognised as a place name.
...
An interesting diversion which Simon Crase put me onto - until about 1880, the South Island was commonly known as the Middle Island instead, with "South Island" referring to the much smaller Stewart Island. For whatever reason - probably due to minimal influence of Steward Island on national affairs - the usage shifted to what it is today, with the modern usage of South Island being formalised by the Lands and Survey Department (now Land Information NZ) in 1907.
The New Zealand Geographic Board seemingly has a strange dislike for arthrous proper nouns (including its own moniker), and declared in 2009 that the official English names are simply "North Island" and "South Island", despite common usage to the contrary. So if you're looking in an index, they're under "N" and "S", not "T".
Prior to that they didn't actually have official names at all.
I wonder whether our continued use of "The" in English is connected to using "Te" in the Māori names Te Ika-a-Māui (The Fish of Māui = The North Island) and Te Waipounamu (The Jade Waters = The South Island).
Unfortunately there is little in the way of hard-and-fast rules on which place names take a definite article, and to make matters even worse, common usage often disagrees with the official position of relevant governments.
This article from the BBC provides some examples:
There are many other country names that are habitually referred to with "the", such as Congo, Gambia, Yemen, Lebanon, Sudan, Netherlands, Philippines and Bahamas.
But according to several authoritative sources, such as the CIA World Factbook, the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World and the US Department of State, only two countries, The Bahamas and The Gambia, should officially be referred to with the article.
The two Congos are officially Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of the Congo. And the longer, official name for Netherlands is Kingdom of the Netherlands.
And a rule of thumb on common usage:
In some of the other cases, says Ashworth, it's largely a question of usage and how people refer to them. Quite commonly, definite articles are attached to areas where they have a mix between geophysical names and a physical entity.
"Groups of islands like the Maldives and the Bahamas. You wouldn't say 'I'm going to Maldives, you'd say 'I'm going to the Maldives' because it's a geographical area."
Countries like the United States of America and the United Kingdom also carry the definite article because they are compound nouns with adjectives.
Professor Liberman says the habit of putting "the" in front of place names is heard throughout the English-speaking world and is common to Germanic and Romance languages.
"In general, use of the definite article is unpredictable. Why should it be London but The Thames? There is no logic for it yet this is the way it is.
Note that whilst this mostly agrees with the advice from grammarly, but handles the case of the United States and the United Kingdom differently.
In the case of the two main islands of New Zealand, the common use of the article aligns with the rule of thumb from the BBC that compound nouns with an adjective often carry the definite article. According to the New Zealand government however, the northern & southern islands should be referred to without an article as North Island & South Island respectively when the English name is used. The official Māori names (Te Ika-a-Māui & Te Waipounamu respectively) do include the Māori definite article "te" though.
So which should you say?
For most purposes, I would use a definite article here, and it is certainly what I have heard the most in the UK (including from New Zealanders). In official contexts, especially if in New Zealand, I might follow the New Zealand government and drop the article.
I will add that the sentence "we go to the North Island" suggests that this is something you do regularly (it is an odd quirk of English that for most verbs* the present tense describes a habitual actions or statements that are true regardless of the time, rather than a single action taking place in the present). If you are instead talking about a specific trip that is not part of a regular habit we would say "we are going to the North island" using the present progressive.
*Exceptions are copula verbs like to be, to appear, & to seem; verbs of sensation like to see (but not its more active counterpart to look), to feel & to think; and modal verbs like can, may, & should (modal verbs don't have a present participle so cannot form the present progressive).
