Google Maps says it's just following longstanding policy.
It is one of life’s truisms that, whenever you see something and think “this couldn’t possibly get any dumber”, it will then proceed to astound and amaze you with just how god damn dumb it can get. Today’s exhibit A is US President Donald Trump’s idea that the Gulf of Mexico, an enormous body of water that borders Cuba, Mexico and the United States, be re-named as the Gulf of America: And signed an executive order in his first week in office to this effect. Priorities, people, priorities!
If you’re looking for an actual reason as to why Trump wants to do this, I suggest looking up the theme song of Team America: World Police. “America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on Earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world,” Trump said in his inaugural address on January 20. “A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.”
This has somewhat inadvertently become a tech story after poor old Google Maps got caught right in the middle. The name change for the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali (another Trump bugbear, he’s renamed it Mount McKinley) will be applied once its Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated:
“When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name,” says Google. “Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.”
Mexico has decided it’s had quite enough of this, and now Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has written to Google asking that the firm reconsider its decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico in Google Maps. She argues that the US cannot legally change the entire basin’s name because the UN convention on the Law of the Sea says a country’s sovereign territory only extends 12 nautical miles out.
“[The name change] could only correspond to the 12 nautical miles away from the coastlines of the United States of America,” said Sheinbaum at a press conference showing the letter. “It cannot apply to the rest, in this case, the Gulf of Mexico. This is what we explained in detail to Google.”
Sheinbaum has previously said Google should not respond to “the mandate of a country” over re-naming “an international sea” and then clearly decided that, if everyone else was clowning around, she may as well join in. “By the way, we are also going to ask for Mexican America to appear on the map,” Sheinbaum joked, referring to her suggestion that North America become known as “América Mexicana.”
My suspicion is that the Gulf of Mexico is going to remain just that for the majority of the world’s population, while the Gulf of America will be a short-lived cause celebre that everyone forgets about in a few years except historians and Wikipedia editors. I’m not going to get into the entire history of this minor ocean’s name, other than to note that it’s first called the Gulf of Mexico in a map dated 1550 and a written account of 1552. There have been other names over time (though “Gulf of America” is notably absent) but, since the 17th century, the Gulf of Mexico has been by far the most common name.
But you can never say never with someone like Trump, and he does seem to have a weirdly determined interest in this rather nationalistic little play.
“For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico,” says Sheinbaum. “And for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico.” As for Google Maps… sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.
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