The newly elected U.S. president Donald Trump has signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. This move is part of his executive orders aimed at claiming U.S. sovereignty and heritage.
Donald Trump claims this body of water is integral to the U.S. He emphasised that the Gulf contributes significantly to oil production and tourism in the country.
Trump signed the executive order last week, and the Interior Department announced on Friday that the body of water is now officially known as the Gulf of America. Despite this, Google has not updated the name to reflect on Google Maps.
Google says it’ll reflect the name on Map immediately after the US government updates the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which serves as the “federal and national standard for geographic nomenclature.”
Google Map also declares that it’ll the highest mountain peak in North America from Denali to Mount McKinley when the GNIS reflects its new official designation. Denali is a name given to the mountain by Alaskan.
Google’s delay in renaming the water body and the mountain Denali is part of the company’s strategy to comply to regulations. The company believes it’s a best practice to apply name changes in Maps only after they've been updated in official government resources.
However, it’s important to note that the change of name of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America applies only to federal references in the U.S.; other countries, particularly Mexico, are not obligated to adopt the new name and will likely continue using “Gulf of Mexico”.
Google emphasized on it longstanding practice that both name—Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of America—will appear on Map when users from outside the country search the water body. This Google Map’s longstanding practice doesn’t only applies to Gulf of Mexico and Mountain Denali, Reuter notes that the rule has been applied to many other regions with naming and territorial disputes like the Sea of Japan—a marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East.
