President-elect Donald Trump wants a “Gulf of America,” and he might be able to get his way if he can nudge Congress or federal officials to go along with it.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump declared at a press conference Tuesday as he denounced a Biden administration move to curb offshore drilling. “What a beautiful name,” Trump added. “And it’s appropriate.”
The president-elect didn’t offer details about why he wants to rename the gulf, although the remarks came alongside other nationalist comments about potentially acquiring Greenland or the Panama Canal.
It’s unclear how seriously Trump intends to pursue his renaming plan or how he’d seek to change the gulf’s name, but a Republican lawmaker has already drafted legislation to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” A spokesperson for Trump’s presidential transition team declined to comment beyond Trump’s speech.
Trump could try to prod Congress or government officials to enact a name change, although the process could prove politically or bureaucratically complicated. And even convincing the federal government to change the name couldn’t force other countries — including Mexico — to update their own maps.
“Names matter,” said David Hayes, who served in the Biden White House and as Interior deputy secretary during the Obama and Clinton administrations. The Interior Department houses the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, an official panel set up to oversee the federal government’s use of geographic names.
Settling disputes over geographic names is “traditionally a consultative process that involves public input,” Hayes said. “Presidents have been respectful of the process in the past,” he added. “I think it’s appropriate to focus on the fact that there are obvious international ramifications here. … Why circumvent the process?”
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which was established in 1890 during the Benjamin Harrison administration, includes officials from across the government and is tasked with settling naming disputes and ensuring consistency across the government.
Members of the public, for example, can propose geographical name changes to the board, although it discourages name changes “unless there is a compelling reason.” And the process can take a while — a minimum of six months, according to the board’s website.
‘There are lots of things we can name’
Presidents and their administrations have gotten involved in previous renaming decisions.
The Obama administration in 2015 renamed Alaska’s Mount McKinley to Denali. That followed a protracted fight between Alaskans who sought the name change and Ohio lawmakers who wanted to keep the name honoring their native President William McKinley (who never visited Alaska).
In the 2015 order changing the name to Denali, then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell directed the Board on Geographic Names to make the change. The board has a policy of deferring action when name changes are being considered by Congress, she said, but noted that contradictory bills had been introduced on the matter since the 1970s. The Interior secretary can take action on matters when the board doesn’t act in a reasonable amount of time, she wrote.
Trump wants to change the name back to Mount McKinley, he said in December, setting up a likely clash with Alaska lawmakers. “McKinley was a very good, maybe a great president,” Trump said. “There are lots of things we can name, but I think he deserves it.”
Changing geographical names has been a top priority for the Biden administration’s Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. She set up an advisory committee aimed at removing derogatory names. She also declared the term “squaw” to be derogatory and ordered the Board on Geographic Names to take steps to remove the word from federal place names.
Presidential name changes don’t always stick. Then-President Lyndon Johnson changed the name of Florida’s Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy in 1963 following President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The Board on Geographic Names changed it back in 1973.
Soon after Trump declared his plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced legislation that would do so. “It’s our gulf. The rightful name is the Gulf of America and it’s what the entire world should refer to it as,” she posted on social media.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum offered a snarky retort to Trump’s idea. “Why don’t we call it Mexican America?” she quipped Wednesday during a press conference, pointing to a historical map where parts of the contemporary United States were titled “America Mexicana.”
“It sounds nice, no?” she said.
‘One more source of tension’
Even if Trump gets his name change, the rest of the world won’t have to abide by it, according to experts.
“U.S. federal government nomenclature applies to U.S. geographic features; other countries and the international community as a whole have no obligation to accept or adopt a U.S. name change — especially for a shared international resource like the Gulf of Mexico,” said Hayes.
“Of all the different diplomatic and geopolitical hot spots and tensions that the U.S. has to deal with, are we well-served to create one more source of tension within the world order for what we may gain from it?” asked Derek Alderman, a geography professor at the University of Tennessee.
“What we may gain from it may actually be very minimal” compared with the “significant costs,” Alderman said. That includes the financial costs of updating maps and other documents as well as an “international cost” of sparking geopolitical tension and an educational cost, he said.
The Gulf of Mexico name “is inherently a recognition that the United States is part of a larger region, is part of a larger world,” Alderman said. “When you now shift it to ‘Gulf of America’ and you prioritize American economic interests and nationalism over that situation internationally, what sort of worldview does that communicate to students?”
Place names are “seemingly very simple and innocent,” but they carry a “massive amount of meaning, and they can also carry with them a massive amount of controversy,” said Alderman, who serves on the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names established by Haaland.
Alderman doesn’t know how long that committee will last.
“It’s obviously not a committee or a board that you would think would be very popular with the incoming administration,” he said.
