Google announced Monday that it will rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” in Google Maps, aligning with an update in the U.S. Geographic Names System.
In addition, the tech giant will revert Alaska’s Denali to its former name, “Mount McKinley.”
“We’ve received a few questions about naming within Google Maps. We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google stated in a post on X.
However, users outside the United States will see both names displayed, in keeping with Google’s global naming policies.
The name changes come after President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his inauguration day last week, fulfilling a campaign pledge. The federal government has since formally enacted the directive.
While the Gulf of Mexico renaming is new, the debate over Denali’s name has been ongoing for years. In 2015, the Obama administration officially recognized the peak’s Indigenous name, Denali. The mountain was originally called Mount McKinley after President William McKinley, despite him never visiting Alaska. The name first appeared in an 1897 article by a gold prospector and gained widespread use following McKinley’s assassination in 1901.
