President Donald Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order calling for the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the Gulf of America in federal filings “in recognition of this burgeoning economic resource and its critical importance to the U.S. economy.” our nation,” but Trump does not have the authority to change the name of the body of water globally.
Key data
The order signed Monday tells the Secretary of the Interior (Trump has tapped North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for the job) to rename the body of water in the U.S. Geographic Names Information System database. country within 30 days.
The move will cause all federal agency maps, contracts and other documents to use the new name when referring to the Gulf, which borders approximately 1,700 miles of coastline in each of the United States and Mexico.
Trump’s order, titled Restore Names That Honor American Greatness, also required that North America’s highest peak, currently called Denali, be renamed Mount McKinley, the name of the Alaskan mountain before 2015.
Can Trump change the name of the Gulf of Mexico?
Yes and no. It is up to the federal government to rename places of interest in the Geographic Names Information System, but that is an internal database that only affects names within the United States. The Office of the Secretary of the Interior has the authority to change the names of American landmarks (former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, for example, criticized the names of hundreds of places that included “derogatory” terms), but it cannot change the names of things outside the country.
Will other countries call it the Gulf of America?
Other countries do not have to accept the change. When Trump first suggested the idea, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded sarcastically and proposed that North America be called “Mexican America.” Mexico’s refusal to use a different name will not affect Trump’s ability to change the agency’s name on federal documents, but it likely means the new name will not be officially used internationally unless both countries reach an agreement.
Surprising fact
It wouldn’t be the first time that countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names. Texas and Mexico refer to the river that divides the two nations along the Texas border differently: Americans call it the Rio Grande and Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo. The body of water between South Korea and Japan is called the “East Sea” in South Korea and the “Sea of Japan” in Japan. The name of the body of water bordering Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam, commonly known as the South China Sea, is also the subject of controversy. Some countries, such as Vietnam, call it the “East Sea”, in China it is the “South Sea” and other people in the region are advocating to call it the “Southeast Asia Sea”. Even within the U.S. government, disagreements are not unknown: Federal agencies generally refer to the crucial gulf between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula as the Persian Gulf, but the military often calls it the Arabian Gulf, the name used by some top America’s Arab defense allies, most of whom are bitter rivals of Iran.
What will Google Earth call the Gulf of America?
Google Earth’s policy is to display the common name of a body of water based on the countries that border it. If all bordering countries agree, the same name is displayed in all searches and languages. But if countries disagree on the correct name for a body of water, the policy is to display both names, with each label located closer to the country or countries that use it.
Who owns the Gulf of Mexico?
Although Trump claims that “we do most of the work there, and it’s ours” in reference to the Gulf of Mexico, international waters are not the property of any country. The United States has territorial control of the Gulf extending up to 12 nautical miles from the coast, as established by presidential proclamation in 1988 and in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the United States claims sovereignty in the area from the airspace to the water column and subsurface. Beyond that, however, the Gulf of Mexico is not under US control.
Crucial ideals
“It is our gulf. The correct name is Gulf of America, and that’s what everyone should call it,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said earlier this month.
This article was originally published by Forbes US.
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