One of President Donald Trump's first actions after last week's inauguration was to sign an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, as well as Denali to Mount McKinley. Now Google has announced it will follow Trump's directive, changing how these landmarks are labelled in Google Maps.
While Trump's order alters the U.S. government's official position regarding the Gulf of Mexico and Denali's names, it does not specifically direct companies to follow suit. Even so, Google confirmed that its Maps app will be renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Denali in an X post on Monday.
"We’ve received a few questions about naming within Google Maps," Google wrote (with at least a few of those questions coming from Mashable). "We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources."
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The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is the U.S. government's official source for geographic features' names, maintaining records and standardising information across the country. As of Monday, the GNIS has not yet been updated to reflect Trump's executive order, and still lists the sea and mountain in question as the Gulf of Mexico and Denali respectively.
However, Trump's directive included a 30-day deadline for the name changes to be completed and all references to the Gulf of Mexico removed. Google has thus stated that it will wait until the GNIS amends its records before switching over to the new Trump-mandated names.
"When that happens, we will update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America," wrote Google.
The tech giant also confirmed that Google Map's name changes won't only be visible to U.S. users. Rather, the "Gulf of America" and "Mount McKinley" labels will be visible to everyone who uses Google Maps regardless of the country they're in. This is due to Google's "longstanding practice" of handling labelling inconsistencies by deferring to a landmark's official name in the country where it's located.
"When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name," said Google. "Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too."
As such, we can reasonably expect Google Maps to change its label for Denali to Mount McKinley across the globe in the near future, as the mountain is located entirely within U.S. borders.
In contrast, the U.S. does not own the Gulf of Mexico/America, which is also bordered by Mexico and Cuba. It therefore appears likely that while U.S. Google Maps users will see the gulf completely renamed to "Gulf of America," international users may see the new name alongside its internationally recognised label "Gulf of Mexico."
Mashable has reached out to Google for comment.
