On the record

Something good has come of unfortunate, nonplussed Lauren Caitlin Upton’s on air meltdown: Geoffrey K. Pullum turns it into a teaching moment about the term of art used to distinguish proper names that do not use a definite article (Argentina, Sudan) and those that do (the Argentine, the Sudan, and, as Upton would have it, *the Iraq). They are, respectively, strong proper names and weak proper names.