Google renames Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America' for U.S. users
What you need to know:
- The California-based company announced on Monday that the name displayed on its maps would depend on the user’s location.
American tech giant Google has started calling the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" after an order by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The California-based company announced on Monday that the name displayed on its maps would depend on the user’s location.
"People in the U.S. will see ‘Gulf of America,’ while those in Mexico will see ‘Gulf of Mexico.’ Others will see both names," Google explained in a blog post.
Google first mentioned this change on X last month, saying it follows names listed in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), a U.S. government database.
In the same post, Google also confirmed that it would rename Mount Denali in Alaska back to Mount McKinley, as per Trump’s order.
The mountain was originally named Denali by the Indigenous Koyukon Athabascan people, but the U.S. government changed it to Mount McKinley in 1917. The name was restored to Denali in 2015 by President Barack Obama.
Trump signed the order to rename these landmarks on January 20, saying it was a way to “honor American greatness.”
However, the move was criticized by Indigenous groups and even led Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum to jokingly suggest renaming North America as “Mexican America.”
