“Gulf of America” is now state policy in Alabama. Thanks to a law that took effect on October 1, state entities and employees in Alabama are now required to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, updating maps, documents and educational materials as required. As Inside Higher Ed reports, this includes public schools and universities—with a carve-out “when reasonable for historical purposes.” It also appears to include reporters at a university-sponsored NPR affiliate. Because free speech, I guess.
Category: Toponyms
MapQuest’s Moment
MapQuest continues to ride a wave of positive publicity after their refusal to rename Lake Ontario. They’ve posted billboards in Chicago and Toronto with directions to the Lake, their CEO made a well-publicized visit to the lake itself, they have we’re-not-changing-the-name merch at their store. Call it principled or opportunistic—it can be both, honestly—but either way they’re making the most of it.
They’ve also posted their roadmap of upcoming features.
South Park Renames Itself
South Park’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have announced that they are changing the show’s name. Variety: “Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of ‘South Park’ to ‘South America,’” the pair shared in a statement. “We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount—a Skydance Capitulation.”
‘They Are Americans’ Nonsense to Deal With’
John Gruber has a problem with Google and Apple showing “Lake Ontario (Lake America)” to users not in the U.S. and Canada: he compares it to China’s insistence on labelling Taiwan as a province of China, or enlarging the Daioyu Islands, which is not something either platform does outside of China. But he does not think that Google or Apple could have ignored Trump’s name changes inside the U.S.:
What a lot of people want is for Google and Apple to just ignore the U.S. government’s official new names. […] But I suspect, quite strongly, that the people who profess to be the most angry at Apple and Google for going along with this change are the same people who would argue most strongly that Goliath tech companies and mega-billionaires wield too much anti-democratic power and influence.
It’s not coherent to argue that Google and Apple should decide which names to put on their maps only when you want them to ignore the names from the official government database. Neither Google nor Apple are going to sell their maps apps, but it’s not outlandish to think that in some alternative universe, one or more of the leading maps app might be owned by, say, Elon Musk or Larry Ellison. Would the people who want Apple and Google to ignore the official names from the GNIS support the same stance if the two leading maps apps were owned by SpaceX and Oracle instead? Obviously they would not.
What we want is a system where geographic names are determined democratically, by voting. And that is the system we in fact have. Trump won. The Department of the Interior has the power to change these names. If you’re angry that their official names in the United States are now Lake America and Gulf of America, stay angry that Trump won the 2024 election. Stay angry that our president continues to debase his office and embarrass our nation. Directing your anger at Google and Apple for reflecting that change is shooting the messengers.
But this is why I find it embarrassing that both Google and Apple are foisting these absurd names on the rest of the world, even if only between parentheses. These names are nonsense, and they are Americans’ nonsense to deal with. […] Spreading the nonsense to the world only makes it more embarrassing.
Previously: Lake Ontario.
Lake Ontario
Here we go again.
Last week the U.S. president did to Lake Ontario what he did to the Gulf of Mexico a year and a half ago: rename it after America. This was part of an ongoing hissy fit against a country—my country—for walking away from trade talks due to demands from the U.S. side that were literally unacceptable.
It was meant to bait us, and in general Canadians have not taken it well (responses ranging from can you believe this doofus to it’s fucking go time). Doug Ford put up a big sign. Blue Rodeo fans screamed the lake’s name at a concert. Our prime minister, Mark Carney, refused to take the bait, issuing the following statement via social media channels:
The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.
The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.
We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms.
Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario—then, now and always.
That’s dry enough that my country’s entire vermouth supply spontaneously combusted. (And yes, we have a leader who can use the word “hydronym” in a social media post.)
Continue reading “Lake Ontario”Nauru Changes Its Name to Naoero
AP: “The Pacific Island country of Nauru has changed its name to the Republic of Naoero, its president said, matching the spelling and pronunciation in the national language.” See also RNZ coverage. This follows other countries’ name changes to match local usage or pronunciation (e.g. Swaziland to Eswatini, Turkey to Türkiye). Name changes like this don’t necessarily affect more linguistically distant exonyms: the Chinese name for Naoero is unchanged.
Exonym Atlas
An exonym is a place name used by outsiders—for example, English speakers using Germany for Deutschland. The Exonym Atlas explores how other languages name countries and groups those names by usage. Fascinating to see the derivations of names, which don’t always follow language families: for example, the Latin Germania gets picked up by English, Greek, Italian and Russian, variants on Allemagne (French) turn up in Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic, and the Slavic-in-origin Niemcy (Polish) gets picked up by Hungarian but not Russian or Bulgarian. [r/etymologymaps]
A Patient Gulf of Mexico Explainer
It’s been more than a year since I last posted about the “Gulf of America” nonsense, but here’s something new to share: a video from World Maps Online in which Paul explains why his maps still call it the Gulf of Mexico—patiently, to online commenters who are giving him grief about it—as well as the long history of bodies of water having different names depending on who’s doing the naming. For all the political charge of this topic, it’s an effective explainer that goes out of its way to shed far more light than heat.
Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’; Google and the Gulf; ‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So; ‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well; Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?; ‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance; A ‘Gulf of America’ Roundup; ‘Gulf of America’ Update: AP Sues White House Officials; If You Thought There Would Be Nothing More to Report About the ‘Gulf of America’ Nonsense, You Were Mistaken; No Gulf Is Safe.
The Vocabulary of Water
What a stream is called says a lot about its hydrology. An arroyo is dry and intermittent; bayous, swamps and sloughs refer to wetlands. Anthony Martinez, a data scientist with the USGS, extracted the feature names from streams in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) database—no mean feat, considering the messiness of names—and plotted the patterns in the firefly maps shown above. Strictly speaking, these are data visualization tutorials, with lots of code in R; it’s nonetheless fascinating to see the feature names follow the conditions. See also Keir Clarke’s interactive version. [Maps Mania]
Previously: Ben Smith’s Maps of British Stream Names.
The Mystery of Elkhams Grave
In this video, Paul Whitewick explores the strange case of Elkhams Grave, a name on the map that would normally refer to an old crossroad grave site—only it appears to be nowhere near a crossroad, parish boundary or other burial ground. It’s a place name with no apparent surviving evidence of the place named.
No Gulf Is Safe
One consolation to all this “Gulf of America” nonsense was that, as something done by executive order, it would be just as easy to undo when all of this is over. Was. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would codify the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” into law—not only requiring federal agencies to comply with the change, but once signed into law it would take another statute to undo the change. The bill is now off to the Senate. CNN, Guardian.
Meanwhile, another gulf is in Donald Trump’s sights. He’s apparently planning to announce that the U.S. will refer to the Persian Gulf as the Gulf of Arabia or Arabian Gulf during his trip to the Middle East next week: CNN, Guardian. The move is guaranteed (and possibly intended) to piss off the Iranians, who have been touchy about any attempts to use Arabian Gulf instead of Persian Gulf for decades (previously: 1, 2).
Which one’s next, do you think? Or will he go full nuclear and take sides on the Sea of Japan/East Sea dispute?
Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’; Google and the Gulf; ‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So; ‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well; Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?; ‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance; A ‘Gulf of America’ Roundup; ‘Gulf of America’ Update: AP Sues White House Officials; If You Thought There Would Be Nothing More to Report About the ‘Gulf of America’ Nonsense, You Were Mistaken.
If You Thought There Would Be Nothing More to Report About the ‘Gulf of America’ Nonsense, You Were Mistaken
This “Gulf of America” business has spread to the state level, and where else would it start but Florida, where two state house bills that would purge “Gulf of Mexico” from state laws and educational materials have now passed the Senate and await Governor DeSantis’s inevitable signature.
In February the White House barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One for failing to use “Gulf of America” in their reporting. On Tuesday a federal judge ordered the Trump White House to lift those restrictions; the White House is now appealing the order.
The public editor for the Dallas Morning News explains why the newspaper continues to use “Gulf of Mexico”: “So, was using ‘Gulf of Mexico’ an editorial lapse or an act of courage? It was neither. It instead reflected a thoughtful, fair-minded decision driven by a pragmatism we typically refer to as common sense.”
Purple Lizard Maps (previously) says they will soon launch a Kickstarter to make a map than honours the history and name of the Gulf of Mexico. “We plan to make a unique, thought-provoking and beautiful map of the Gulf of Mexico. One that highlights 10,000 years of cultural, political and environmental history in this region. This will be a historical record, a piece of art, and a stand against cultural erasure.”
Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’; Google and the Gulf; ‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So; ‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well; Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?; ‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance; A ‘Gulf of America’ Roundup; ‘Gulf of America’ Update: AP Sues White House Officials.
Apple Maps Adds Indigenous Lands and Place Names to Australia and New Zealand
Apple announced last week that Apple Maps will now display Indigenous lands, place names and other content in Australia and New Zealand.
Beginning today, Apple Maps now displays Indigenous lands in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. By gathering information from Indigenous advisors, cartographers, Traditional Owners, language holders, and community members, Apple Maps will show reserves and Indigenous Protected Areas, Indigenous place names, Traditional Country, and dual-language labels. Indigenous lands place cards feature information about the local area and Traditional Owners, and can be curated to allow communities to add their own photos, destinations on their land, and text in their own language. Representation of Indigenous lands in Apple Maps provides users with a more comprehensive experience while also recognising the stories and significance behind them.
More at the Guardian. This follows Apple’s move to show Indigenous lands in Canada and the U.S. in 2023. [Lat × Long]
‘Gulf of America’ Update: AP Sues White House Officials
On Friday the Associated Press sued three White House officials on First and Fifth Amendment grounds, calling the White House’s barring of AP reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One for refusing to adopt the “Gulf of America” moniker for the Gulf of Mexico. The AP is calling the White House’s action an unconstitutional retaliation against protected free speech: “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government.” I spotted a copy of the complaint (PDF) on PetaPixel.
Update, 25 Feb: A federal judge denied the AP’s request for emergency relief on Monday, citing the lack of irreparable harm, and set a hearing for March 20. The judge, a Trump appointee, did describe the ban as “discriminatory” and “problematic.” BBC News, CNN.
Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’; Google and the Gulf; ‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So; ‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well; Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?; ‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance; A ‘Gulf of America’ Roundup.
A ‘Gulf of America’ Roundup
Two long reads on Apple, Google and the Gulf of America nonsense. Miguel García looks the history of places with multiple names, and how Google Maps in particular has handled them, using the Matterhorn (Mont Cervin, Monte Cervino) as an uncontentious example. John Gruber, whose Daring Fireball blog has covered the Apple side of the tech world for more than two decades, has a bracing, no-punches-pulled take that covers the utter lunacy of the name change, Google’s and Apple’s history of obeisance to autocratic regimes and the excessive compliance involved in showing “Gulf of America (Gulf of Mexico)” to the rest of the world.
Meanwhile, even Fox News and Newsmax are among the 40 news organizations who’ve signed on to a White House Correspondents Association letter protesting the White House’s blacklisting of the Associated Press for refusing to comply with the “Gulf of America” edict.
Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’; Google and the Gulf; ‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So; ‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well; Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?; ‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance.