Naming the Gulf

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

It’s been a grand total of one day since Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretary of the Interior to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Or, to be more precise,

within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Interior shall, consistent with 43 U.S.C. 364 through 364f, take all appropriate actions to rename as the “Gulf of America” 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. The Secretary shall subsequently update the GNIS to reflect the renaming of the Gulf and remove all references to the Gulf of Mexico from the GNIS, consistent with applicable law. The Board shall provide guidance to ensure all federal references to the Gulf of America, including on agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications shall reflect its renaming.

Despite the timetable of Trump’s order, and the fact that his pick for interior secretary hasn’t as of this writing even been confirmed yet (in the meantime, presumably the order falls uncomfortably in the lap of the acting secretary, a career official), Trump’s followers are already after people to adopt the name change right now, dammit. A Republican congressman is after Apple about their maps, and the Gulf of Mexico Wikipedia article’s talk page has exploded as users come in demanding the name change. And even after the GNIS changes the name—and to be clear, what we’re talking about is the name of the portion of the Gulf of Mexico found in U.S. territorial waters, because a country can’t unilaterally change the name of an international body of water—you can’t force anyone to use that name: not other countries, not private companies, and certainly not individuals.

But oh, you can take note of who refuses to do so. “Gulf of America” is basically a loyalty test—a MAGA shibboleth.

Whatever your take on Trump’s rhetoric about the Gulf of Mexico being an integral part of the U.S., the Gulf of Mexico’s name predates that status, and not by not a little bit. The United States did not reach the Gulf of Mexico until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which gave it New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi, and the Spanish Cession of 1819, which gave it Florida and the Gulf Coast east of Texas. How much before that did the Gulf of Mexico get its name? Let’s find some answers by looking at old maps.

An 18th-century French-language map showing the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi River.
“Les costes aux environs de la rivière de Misisipi: découvertes par Mr. de la Salle en 1683 et reconnues par Mr. le Chevallier d’Iberville en 1698 et 1699,” from Nicolas de Fer, L’Atlas curieux, 1701. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

French maps of the late 1600s and early 1700s—a century before the Louisiana Purchase, when the French were active in the area—routinely referred to it as the Golfe de Mexique. See, for example, maps by Claude Bernou, Nicolas de Fer (above, here and here), Jaillot and Mortier, or Jean Lattre (featured image).

Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, Carte de la nouvelle découverte que les RR. Pères Jésuites ont fait en l’année 1672 et continuée par le R. Père Jacques Marquette, de la mesme compagnie, accompagné de quelques François en l’année 1673, qu’on pourra nommer la Manitounie, 1673. Library of Congress.

So did Marquette’s map in 1673 (above: see the far left edge of the map). At roughly the same time, John Ogilby’s atlas, America, included a map that labelled the Gulf the Golfo de Nueva España—the Gulf of New Spain.

But we can go farther back still.

Left: detail from Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicae (ca. 1595). Right: detail from Le Moyne de Morgues, Floridae Americae provinciae (1591). Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

In response to a question I posted on Mastodon yesterday, Keith Jenkins pointed me to four maps dating from the 1580s and 90s: André Thevet’s Nouveau monde descouvert et illustre de nostre temps (1581) calls it Golfe Mexique. Giovanni Battista Massa calls it Golfo Mexicano in the 1590s Americae et proximar regionum orae descriptio, as does Mercator (detail above left). Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues’s 1591 map of Florida and Cuba (detail above right) has the label Mexicani sinus pars—part of the Mexican Gulf.

Detail from Mercator, Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate (1569). Wikimedia Commons.

And as Henry Patton points out, Golfo Mexicano appears on Mercator’s 1569 world map as well.

This is more than two hundred years before the American Revolution.

So the Gulf of Mexico has had its name for at least 456 years. Europeans were calling it the Gulf of Mexico when the only English presence in North America was the Roanoke colony, and when “America” was a fairly new name, coined not that long before by Martin Waldseemüller, for the entire New World.

Regimes change place names all the time. It’s not remotely the worst thing they can do. But the changes seldom outlast the regime doing the renaming: ask the residents of Leningrad or Karl-Marx-Stadt—or Zaire, for that matter. A stroke of a pen can just as easily undo a name change. And a name that has been on the map for 456 years has better odds than most of making it through.

[Updated 22 Jan 2025 at 8:52 AM EST to add reference to Mercator’s 1569 world atlas, and update the number of years the Gulf of Mexico has had its name.]

Update 28 Jan 2025: Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much.

Update: More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’.

More updates: