As part of a torrent of decisions he issued hours after taking office, President Donald Trump declared that the name of America’s tallest mountain be changed from Denali to Mount McKinley, and that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed “The Gulf of America.”
Trump’s executive order Monday directing the Department of Interior to make the changes within 30 days on all federal government maps and documents has generated a surge in geography interest online, and a common question: can he actually do that?
Yes, say experts.
But there are some fairly big caveats. Among them: other countries don’t have to recognize the changes. And a future president can change the names back.
“Can he do it? Yes he can,” said Clancy Wilmott, an assistant professor of geography at UC Berkeley. “But Mexico will just keep calling all of it the Gulf of Mexico. Other countries will also.”
Many presidents have renamed places. President Biden’s administration renamed 650 American streams, lakes, valleys, peaks and other features in 2023 that had names based on offensive racial stereotypes. President Obama renamed the 20,310-foot Alaskan peak “Denali” in 2015, dumping the name of America’s 25th president, William McKinley — who never visited Alaska — in favor of Alaska’s Koyukon people, who have called the peak Denali, or “the High One,” for thousands of years.
“It will create a lot of work for federal bureaucrats,” Wilmott added. “They will have to change lots of maps and documents. But it’s mostly symbolic.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday that Trump can call the vast body of water that borders both countries whatever he wants. But “for us,” she said, “it is still the Gulf of Mexico, and for the entire world it is still the Gulf of Mexico.”
Earlier this month, Scheinbaum joked that perhaps North America should be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America,” because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded…
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