by Lacey Pfalz
Last updated: 10:25 AM ET, Tue January 28, 2025
Google Maps has announced that it’s prepared to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America per US President Donald Trump’s wishes once the change has been made official with the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which is part of the Geological Survey within the Department of the Interior.
Google posted the news on X, formerly Twitter, writing: “We’ve received a few questions about naming within Google Maps. We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources. For geographic features in the U.S., this is when Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated. When that happens, we will update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America.”
The posts also explain that this change will only be visible to people within the United States, where the change is taking place. Others across the globe will continue to see the Gulf of Mexico’s original name, which has been used in maps since the mid-16th century.
According to the BBC, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum poked fun at the name change, jokingly suggesting they change the name of North America to "América Mexicana,” which translates to "Mexican America.”
"He says that he will call it the Gulf of America on its continental shelf," Sheinbaum said last week. "For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico, and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico."
In one of Trump’s first executive orders, he’d ordered the name of the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the Gulf of America after, no doubt, the United States of America.
The executive order also repealed the 2015 name change of Mount McKinley in Alaska to its original name, Mount Denali, a change which was completed during the Obama Administration as a gesture of goodwill for Alaskan Native Americans.
Trump favors the name Mount McKinley, because President William McKinley made the US “very rich.” Google also plans to rename the mount after it is officially changed.
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