Reportedly, Google Maps users in the United States can expect to see the body of water known for centuries as the “Gulf of Mexico” labeled the “Gulf of America”, aligning with the terms of President Trump’s recent executive order.
Google also reported that “Denali”, the mountain in southern Alaska formerly known as “Mt. McKinley”, will now be called “Mt. McKinley” on Google Maps, reflecting the same presidential mandate.
Apparently, these changes will apply only if you are using Google Maps in the U.S. If you’re using the Google Maps in Mexico, you will still see “Golfo de Mexico” just like it’s always been. Misspelled.
I’ve long been bothered by the name, “Gulf of Mexico”. In fact, I don’t even like Mexico being named “Mexico”. I’m sort of hoping President Trump is just getting started with the name changes, and we can start calling Mexico, “America”.
Mostly, I’d like to get rid of the name “Mexico” altogether. It’s been a irritation for too long.
There are other places that could be re-named “America” as well, while we’re in the mood for name changes. Canada, for example.
My parents called me “Louie” when I was a kid, which always sounded childish to me. So when I left to go to college, I introduced myself to everyone as “Louis”. Now my friends from high school still call me “Louie” while my friends from college call me “Louis”. That’s how I can tell them apart.
Apparently, some Mexican citizens have been confused by the change to “Gulf of America”. They mistakenly believe President Trump is paying tribute to the popular Mexican football team, Club América. But that’s obviously not the case, as we can tell by the absence of the accent mark above the “e”.
Also, it’s rumored that the team will be changing its name to “Club Mexico”, in protest. But I’m pretty sure Trump can change it back, if he wants to.
It’s easy for Google to change the names of gulfs and mountains in its online mapping program. But changing the names in the millions of school books that still say, “Gulf of Mexico” and “Denali”, will be a bigger chore. Probably, the federal government could print up a bunch of stickers that say, “America” and “Mt. KcKinley” and distribute them to schools. Kids like putting stickers on things, and it would give them a sense of pride, knowing that the federal government can change place names whenever it wants to.
Of course, this isn’t the first time the U.S. government has changed the name of a place. In 2022, The U.S. Department of the Interior proposed a list of new names for more than 660 geographic features. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as cabinet secretary, announced a sweeping plan to remove the racist, misogynist slur “Squaw” from the national geographic landscape. Hundreds of U.S. geographic sites, including mountains, rivers, lakes, remote islands and more, were named using that word, according to The New York Times.
Apparently, the very name “America” was sort of an accident by mapmakers back in the 1500s, starting when German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller thought the two continents (North and South America) ought to be named after an obscure Italian explorer named Amerigo Vespucci.
At first, the mapmakers thought our country was “America Sive India Nova” and then later, they labeled most of it “America Mexicana”.
We later appended “The United States of” to “America”, but I don’t think that actually fixed the problem.
We can also note that China has changed a bunch of their place names, without ever asking our permission. “Beijing” used to be called “Peking”. And the “Yellow River” is now “Huang He”. But again, President Trump has the power to change those back to the real names, if he can find the time… busy as he is.
No one can predict the future, but I wouldn’t be surprised if President Trump eventually puts “Squaw” back into all those 660 names that Deb Haaland changed. Just seems like something he would do.