PPresident-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he would move to try to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” a name he said was “fun.”
His latest proposal is to redraw the map of the Western Hemisphere. Trump has repeatedly referred to Canada as the “51st State,” demanded that Denmark consider giving up Greenland, and asked Panama to return the Panama Canal.
Read more: Trump Runs The World Like A Monopoly Board
Here’s a look at his comments and what goes into the name.
Why is Trump talking about renaming the Gulf of Mexico?
Since running for the White House in 2016, Trump has repeatedly clashed with Mexico over a range of issues, including border security and tariffs on imported goods. He then vowed to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it. The US eventually built or repaired a 450-kilometer wall during his first term.
The Gulf of Mexico is often referred to as the “Third Coast” of the United States because of its coastline in five southeastern states. Mexicans use the Spanish version of the same name for the port: “El Golfo de México.”
Americans and Mexicans are divided over what to call another important body of water, the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. The Americans call it the Rio Grande; The Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.
Can Trump change the name of the Gulf of Mexico?
Perhaps, but it is not a unilateral decision, and other countries should not follow suit.
The International Hydrographic Organization—both of which the United States and Mexico are members—works to ensure that all of the world’s seas, oceans, and navigable waters are surveyed and charted on the same chart, and it also names some of them. There are cases where countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names in their documents.
It would be easier if the site or most of the water is within the country’s borders. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama approved an Interior Department order to rename Mount McKinley—the highest mountain in North America—to Denali, a move Trump has said he wants to reverse.
Shortly after Trump’s comments on Tuesday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia during an interview with broadcaster Benny Johnson said she would direct her staff to draft legislation to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, a move she said would ensure funding. new maps and administrative policy materials across the government.
How was the Gulf of Mexico named?
For more than four hundred years water has been denoted by that name, the original designation believed to have been taken from a Native American city, “Mexico.”
Has renaming the Gulf of Mexico come up before?
Yes. In 2012, a member of the Mississippi Legislature proposed a bill to rename parts of the gulf that affects that state’s beaches the “Gulf of America,” a move the bill’s author later called “a joke.” That bill, which was referred to committee, did not pass.
Two years earlier, comedian Stephen Colbert joked on his show that, after the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it should be renamed the “Gulf of America” because, “We broke it, we bought it.”
Are there other international disputes over place names?
There is a long-standing dispute over the name of the Sea of Japan between Japan, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, with South Korea arguing that the current name was not used until Korea was ruled by Japan. At the meeting of the International Hydrographic Organization in 2020, member countries agreed on a plan to replace names with numerical identifiers and develop a new digital standard for modern geographic information systems.
The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although the use of the terms “Gulf” and “Arabian Gulf” is common in many Middle Eastern countries. The Iranian government threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company’s decision not to label large bodies of water on its maps.
There have been other discussions about bodies of water, including from Trump’s 2016 opponent. According to the material revealed by WikiLeaks in the hacking of the personal account of the chairman of his campaign, the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2013 told the audience that, in the opinion of China, it wanted almost the entire South China Sea, and it became the US after the World War. II could have called the Pacific Ocean “the American Ocean.”
—Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina.
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