Definite articles are usually not construed with proper nouns unless they are part of the name as such (cf. Section 18.1.2.1, (87)). This is especially true for names of companies and organizations. Some cases are given in (131); the difference between (131c) and (131d) serves to show that the presence of the definite article is largely idiosyncratic. In many cases, such proper nouns have acronyms. The primed examples show that the definite article is generally retained when an acronym is used instead of the full name. Example (131d') further shows that the acronyms of names that do not contain an article also lack an article.

In (131) we used plural names for the reason that the full nouns and the acronyms may differ in the number agreement they trigger on the finite verb of a clause. Consider the examples in (132), which show that abbreviations of a formal plural can, and typically do, externally behave like a singular. Example (132b) shows that de NS can trigger either singular or plural agreement on the finite verb, the former being the more colloquial form and the latter the more formal form. Note that the company itself prefers to use the acronym without the article, in which case plural agreement is no longer possible: a typical example taken from the official NS website (www.ns.nl/over-ns; accessed June 29, 2023) is given in (132c).

The acronym of de Verenigde Staten in (133b) also alternates between singular and plural agreement, unlike in American English, where the US usually triggers singular agreement (Carole Boster, p.c.). Article drop is not possible in (133b), suggesting that article drop is limited to corporations. For completeness, note that although it is sometimes claimed that the full form de Verenigde Staten in (133a) always triggers plural agreement, it is easy to find examples on the internet where it functions as a singular noun phrase, as is also common in American English.

While (132) and (133) show that abbreviations of formal plurals can outwardly behave like plurals, the examples in (134) show that this is not always the case. Although both CD and D66 correspond to formal plurals (both have the plural noun Democraten as their head), plural agreement with de CD is very awkward. Plural agreement with D66 is out of the question. The latter seems to be related to the fact that D66 obligatorily occurs without an article; cf. the fact that article-less NS in (132c) also triggers singular agreement.

Acronyms exhibit special behavior not only with respect to number agreement, but also with respect to gender. The examples in (135) are representative cases of acronyms whose full form is headed by the non-neuter singular onderzoekschool. We see, however, that the acronym LOT is preferably construed with the neuter article het. One might speculate that this is due to interference from the fact that the lexical item lotfate/lottery ticket is also a neuter noun, but this cannot be the whole story, since the neuter article is also used with the acronym FNV in (135b') for which no corresponding lexical item can be found.

In many cases, acronyms begin to behave like proper nouns themselves, in the sense that the public no longer knows the original name for which the acronym stands. A good example is ASN bank: the acronym ASN stands for Algemene Spaarbank Nederland (lit: General Savings Bank of the Netherlands), but apparently the acronym has become so obscure that the company felt the need to add the noun bank to the acronym. It should be clear by now that once acronyms get to this stage, they can exhibit all sorts of unexpected behavior.