Gulf of Mexico – The Map Room

No Gulf Is Safe

Published on 8 May 20258 May 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

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

Published on 10 April 202510 April 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

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.”

‘Gulf of America’ Update: AP Sues White House Officials

Published on 23 February 202510 March 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

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.

A ‘Gulf of America’ Roundup

Published on 21 February 202521 February 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

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.

‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance

Published on 17 February 202517 February 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

A screenshot from Apple Maps, showing how the Gulf of Mexico is labelled as Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America). — Apple Maps (screenshot)

Compliance

While it was reported that Apple would comply with the “Gulf of America” renaming, I wasn’t sure what Apple would do outside the U.S.; now it appears that it will follow Google’s lead and show both names. Above is what I see in Canada; I wonder what Apple is showing Mexican users.

Meanwhile, Axios, citing its mainly U.S. audience, is adopting “Gulf of America” (HuffPost, The Hill, The Wrap) but had this to say about the White House blacklisting the Associated Press: “At the same time, the government should never dictate how any news organization makes editorial decisions. The AP and all news organizations should be free to report as they see fit. This is a bedrock of a free press and durable democracy.”

Resistance

The name change is broadly unpopular and people are finding ways to resist it. If “Gulf of America” becomes a way to signal compliance with the regime, it looks like “Gulf of Mexico,” even on a t-shirt (which I’ve seen already), will signal noncompliance.

Bryce Bostwick has released a Chrome extension that restores “Gulf of Mexico” to Google Maps. As he says, “There are a lot of scary executive orders being issued right now. This is not one of the most important ones. But it might be the easiest to defy.” This apparently took some reverse engineering, as he explains in a 24-minute video.

MapQuest—remember MapQuest?—has not as yet complied with the Trump executive order; in fact, they’ve decided to have some fun with it, with a tongue-in-cheek tool that allows you to rename the Gulf yourself.

A user-generated map of the Gulf of Mexico from Mapquest’s gulfof.mapquest.com tool, labelling the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Compliance in Advance. — MapQuest (gulfof.mapquest.com)

Is ‘Gulf of Mexico’ Worth Fighting For?

Published on 15 February 202515 February 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

The Associated Press is now banned from the Oval Office and Air Force One indefinitely for refusing to toe the Trump line on “Gulf of America.” The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple thinks this is a hill worth dying on: “On this particular hill, we have the freedom to make editorial choices without government intervention and manipulation.” On the other hand, The Atlantic’s Gilad Edelman thinks this was the wrong fight to pick: “A huge share of Trump’s actions over the past four weeks fall somewhere on the spectrum from ‘legally questionable’ to ‘plainly unconstitutional.’ The ‘Gulf of America’ rebrand is not one of them.”

Making you make me shows everyone who you are. There’s something to be said for that.

‘Gulf of America’ Isn’t Going Over Well

Published on 13 February 202513 February 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted 24-26 January found that 70 percent of Americans oppose renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America; only 25 percent support the move.

Google Maps users have been leaving one-star reviews of the Gulf to protest Google’s compliance with the renaming; Google has deleted the reviews and prevented new reviews from being posted. (Users are also review-bombing the Google Maps app itself.) That’s far from Google’s only problem: Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said today that her government was weighing a lawsuit against Google over the change (AP, Politico).

Meanwhile, the White House continues to punish the Associated Press by denying Oval Office access, and the AP is considering legal action on First Amendment grounds (CNN, NPR, Politico). The AP’s own story hints at one issue: a lot of news organizations follow the AP style, and cowing the AP into submission kills a lot of birds with one stone. In addition, the New York Times and Washington Post say they’ll continue using Gulf of Mexico.

Bloomberg’s Linda Poon provides some history and context to the change and to the renaming process in general, and has quotes from Mark Monmonier and representatives from Rand McNally and TomTom—because the tech giants aren’t the only ones making maps.

Writing for The Atlantic, David Frum sees the renaming of the Gulf as a sign of weakness.

In the age of discovery and conquest, European mariners often named bodies of water after the destination territory on the other side of that water. The Gulf of Mexico is so called because when a Spaniard sailed toward Mexico, the Gulf was the sea that the Spaniard crossed.

Once you understand this practice, you see it everywhere. […]

Bodies of water are typically named by dominant nations not after themselves, but after the subordinate nations on the other side. To rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America” is to reconceptualize the United States not as a sending point, but as a receiving point; no longer a country that stamps itself upon history, but a country upon which history is stamped.

‘Gulf of America’: Apple Conforms, AP Punished for Not Doing So

Published on 11 February 202511 February 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

Google isn’t alone: Apple is also changing Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America to its maps. According to Bloomberg, the change is happening today for U.S. users and rolling out globally later, which if true is a lot more compliance than Google is showing. AppleInsider, TechCrunch, The Verge.

Apple and Google are changing their maps despite being legally required to do so, at least according to a report from the Congressional Research service (via Engadget):

BGN decisions are not required to be adopted for nonfederal domestic publications. For decades, the Alaska State government has used “Denali” in place of “Mount McKinley” on state publications and maps. The E.O. would not mandate changes to the usage of “Denali” by the State of Alaska. Similarly, the E.O. would not require private company applications, such as Google Maps and Apple Maps, to adopt the changed names. Nonfederal entities may choose to adopt BGN naming conventions moving forward.

That they’re doing so can be explained easily enough: fear of retaliation. Something the Associated Press discovered today: they announced last month that they’d continue using “Gulf of Mexico,” citing their global role and reach. From an AP statement today:

Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office. This afternoon AP’s reporter was blocked from attending an executive order signing.

It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment.

As I wrote when this first went down: “‘Gulf of America’ is basically a loyalty test—a MAGA shibboleth.” The point is seeing who obeys—and who doesn’t.

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.

Google and the Gulf

Published on 11 February 202511 February 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

A screenshot from Google Maps showing the Gulf of Mexico labelled as 'Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)' — What I see here in Canada. Google Maps (screenshot)

Three weeks to the day after Trump’s executive order directing that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed Gulf of America, the new name now appears on Google Maps for U.S. users; outside the U.S. and Mexico, users see both names. A blog post by Google outlines who will see what where.

A screenshot showing different labels of the Gulf of Mexico depending on where you are: U.S. users get Gulf of America, Mexican users get Gulf of Mexico, everyone else gets Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America). — Google (screenshot)

Andrew Middleton notes that review by the Board on Geographic Names “usually takes a while. Two weeks is a freaking speed run. The Board is completely nuts if they think it’s ok to approve a name that no one even heard of before last month.”

More coverage at BBC News, CNN, TechCrunch and The Verge.

Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much; More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’.

More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’

Published on 29 January 202529 January 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

Yesterday’s post looked mainly at Google’s response to Trump’s renaming of Denali and the Gulf of Mexico. Today some news about Apple and OpenStreetMap. On Daring Fireball, John Gruber points to OpenStreetMap forum discussions about the change, which reveals some nuances and complications despite the utter lunacy of the situation. And AppleInsider reports a small change in Apple Maps that may or may not be a placeholder:

If users navigate to the Gulf of Mexico, it still shows the 400-year-old name plain as day.

However, if a user searches “Gulf of America,” the text over the Gulf changes to reflect the search result, but the information sheet shows data and photos about the Gulf of Mexico. This seems to be a working solution that could stick, but there isn’t any word from Apple if that is the plan.

Meanwhile, according to CNN, Mexico’s response to the name change ranges somewhere between dismissive and mocking. The Conversation offers a primer on what goes into changing a U.S. place name.

On the lighter side, Martijn van Exel has created a Gulf of Mexico Watcher that checks whether it’s still being called that. More bitter in tone are the MAGA plugin and the New World Order Google Map, which offer a more … interactive response.

Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much.

Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much

Published on 28 January 202528 January 2025 by Jonathan Crowe

Lots of news coverage about Google’s announcement that it will follow Trump’s lead and change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America (and Denali to Mount McKinley) on Google Maps once the GNIS database has been updated—at least when showing it to American users. Mexicans will still get Gulf of Mexico, while the rest of us will get both names. See coverage at BBC, CNBC, CNN, Guardian, TechCrunch, among many many many others.

I’m not sure why some people were expecting Big Tech to lead the resistance (especially a trillion-dollar company), and over one of the easiest things to undo once this is all over: Google has made a point of accommodating government requests on its maps, showing the “right” borders and place names to the right users. See previous post: Google Maps as Non-State Authority.

But not everyone is falling into line. The British government has no plans to refer to it as the Gulf of America, nor will British maps change unless it becomes the most commonly used name: see The Independent and The Telegraph.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press is updating its stylebook in a way that splits the difference, following Trump on Denali/Mount McKinley because it’s fully within his purview but pointing to the Gulf’s international status: “The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”

Previously: Naming the Gulf.

Update 9:10 PM: More detail from CNBC, which reports that “Google’s maps division on Monday reclassified the U.S. as a ‘sensitive country,’ a designation it reserves for states with strict governments and border disputes […] Google’s list of sensitive countries includes China, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, among others. […] Google’s order states that the Gulf of America title change should be treated similar to the Persian Gulf, which in Arab countries is displayed on Google Maps as Arabian Gulf.”

Naming the Gulf

Published on 21 January 202521 February 2025 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.

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