Tom Cadden wrote:
For years the town of Kells in Ireland
Oh look at that, the article is at "Republic of Ireland" instead of just "Ireland", even though very few English speakers would ever rattle off the whole mouthful, and in fact would be far more likely to say "Irish Republic" if they were trying to distinguish the state. The article itself even says that "Republic of Ireland" is the less-commonly-used form. So by naming rules strictly applied, and keeping in mind the ambiguity with the island, it should be "Ireland (republic)" instead, the parenthesized appendage being the standard way to disambiguate.
There are simply some situations where mechanical rule application produces ridiculous results, and we need to be more intelligent about it.
Stan