Can President Trump rename the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” and Denali as “Mount McKinley?” Is that legal?
Famous places can get name changes, experts say, but they don’t always last
As part of a torrent of decisions he issued this week hours after taking office, President Trump declared that the name of America’s tallest mountain be changed from Denali to Mount McKinley, and that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed “The Gulf of America.”
Trump’s executive order Monday directing the Department of Interior to make the changes within 30 days on all federal government maps and documents has generated a surge in geography interest online, and a common question: Can he actually do that?
Yes, say experts.
But there are some fairly big caveats. Among them: Other countries don’t have to recognize the changes. And a future president can change the names back.
“Can he do it? Yes he can,” said Clancy Wilmott, an assistant professor of geography at UC Berkeley. “But Mexico will just keep calling all of it the Gulf of Mexico. Other countries will also.”
Many presidents have renamed places. President Biden took the names of Confederate generals off U.S. military bases. President Obama officially renamed the 20,310-foot Alaskan peak “Denali” in 2015, dumping the name of America’s 25th president, William McKinley, who never visited Alaska, in favor of Alaska’s Koyukon people, who have called the peak Denali, or “the High One” for thousands of years.
“It will create a lot of work for federal bureaucrats,” Wilmott added. “They will have to change lots of maps and documents. But it’s mostly symbolic.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Trump can call the vast body of water that borders both countries whatever he wants. But “for us,” she said, “it is still the Gulf of Mexico and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico.”
Earlier this month, Scheinbaum joked that perhaps North America should be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America,” because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.
“That sounds nice, no?” she said.
In his inaugural speech, Trump framed name changes as a way to boost patriotism.
“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,” he said Monday. “A short time from now, we are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And we will restore the name of the great President William McKinley to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.”
McKinley, a Republican from Ohio, was elected in 1896 and shot to death in 1901 in Buffalo by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. A gold prospector in Alaska began calling the peak “Mount McKinley” in 1897 and the name stuck after his assassination.
During the inagural speech, when Trump mentioned the “Gulf of America,” former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, sitting in the crowd nearby, began laughing and shaking her head.
Many Republicans, however, already are embracing it.
On Monday night, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida declared a weather emergency as a rare snowstorm headed toward Florida. His executive order noted “an area of low pressure moving across the Gulf of America.”
The U.S. Coast Guard, whose commander Trump fired this week, issued a news release Tuesday saying it will boost ships, planes and sailors in “the Gulf of America” to reduce illegal immigration and drug smuggling.
Not all the Gulf of Mexico, whose name dates back to the 1600s, will become the “Gulf of America,” though.
Trump’s executive order didn’t include the whole gulf, only the parts in U.S. territorial waters. Those the order defined as “the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.”
That covers less than half of the area of the Gulf of Mexico. The rest extends southalong the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo and to Cuba in the southeast.
Regarding Alaska, the executive order also notes that Denali National Park, where the re-christened Mount McKinley is located, will still be called “Denali National Park.” Congress called it “Mount McKinley National Park” in 1917. But in 1980, President Jimmy Carter changed it to Denali National Park when he signed a sweeping law establishing and expanding 13 national parks in Alaska.
Both U.S. senators from Alaska say they oppose changing the name. One, Dan Sullivan, is married to a woman, Julie Fate, from a native Alaskan family. The other, Lisa Murkowski, issued a statement saying Denali “must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial.”
There are thousands of disagreements over place names all over the world, said UC Berkeley’s Wilmott. Americans call the river in southern Texas the Rio Grande, while Mexico calls it the Rio Bravo. The British call islands off Argentina’s coast “the Falklands” while Argentinians call them “Islas de Malvinas.”
In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt renamed Hoover Dam as “Boulder Dam” when he took office to get back at his rival, Republican Herbert Hoover. When FDR died, President Truman restored Hoover’s name.
Large map online providers, such as Google and Apple, actually show different place names based on which country a search is coming from, Wilmott said. For U.S. government maps and websites, the next president could easily reverse Trump’s orders with new executive orders.
“The bigger the place the more expensive the change,” she said. “Federal agencies are going to have to prepare lots of paperwork.”
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