Washington: Google Maps will update the name of the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America” for U.S. users following an official change in the U.S. Geographic Names System, Google confirmed in an X post on Monday. The new name will be visible in the U.S., but users in Mexico will still see “Gulf of Mexico”. International users will see both names on Google Maps.
The U.S. Interior Department, under the Trump administration, announced on Friday that the name change for the Gulf of Mexico, alongside the renaming of Denali (North America’s tallest peak) to Mount McKinley, was official.
The name change was part of a series of executive actions signed by President Donald Trump on January 20, fulfilling a campaign promise. “As directed by the President, the Gulf of Mexico will now officially be known as the Gulf of America, and North America’s highest peak will once again bear the name Mount McKinley,” the Interior Department said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum humorously suggested renaming the entire continent of North America as “Mexican America”, based on an early map that referred to the region by that name.
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When asked for comment, a Google spokesperson referred to the company’s X post. Google Maps has followed similar practices for other locations with naming disputes, applying locale-based labeling conventions.
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For example, outside of Japan and South Korea, the body of water between the two nations is listed as the “Sea of Japan (East Sea).” Additionally, in 2012, Iran threatened legal action against Google over its removal of the term “Persian Gulf” from Google Maps, leaving the waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula nameless. It is now labeled as “Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf)” in other countries.
