[blastfromthepast]

l-hotel.com is the famous five star «L’Hôtel» hotel chain. L’Hôtel is a trade mark. Yes, it means The Hotel. From the English name, it makes you wonder, why would somoene choose such a stupid name - The Hotel. Obviously, it sounds a lot better in French, otherwise, the name wouldn't have been chosen.

The New York Times doesn't use thenewyorktimes.com, although that domain forwards to the real one, nytimes.com. Clearly, the word "the" is rarely used in English URLs.

In French, the opposite is true. Monde.fr forwards to lemonde.fr. Why? Because the French obviously prefer the article as part of the name.

The argument that they got lemonde.fr as a second choice because they couldn't get monde.fr simply doesn't hold. They have it. They choose not to use it.