Google Maps Will Rename Gulf of Mexico to ‘Gulf of America’, for American Users Only

Google, in an announcement on X:

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.

For geographic features in the U.S., this is when Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated. When that happens, we will update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America.

Also longstanding practice: When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.

Jennifer Elias, reporting for CNBC:

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, CNBC has learned. [...]

Some team members within the maps division were ordered to urgently make changes to the location name and recategorize the U.S. from “non-sensitive” to “sensitive,” according to the internal correspondence. The changes were given a rare “P0” order, meaning it had the highest priority level and employees were immediately notified and instructed to drop what they were doing to work on it.

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.

No word from Apple on how Apple Maps will handle this. (I’ve asked for comment; will update if I get an answer.) Re-renaming Denali back to Mount McKinley seems like a no-brainer for the maps to comply with. A country names its own mountains. If Obama could rename it, Trump can re-rename it.

The Gulf of Mexico, though, is an international body of water, and its name wasn’t even debated until Trump started talking about it a few weeks ago. Google (and perhaps Apple) having a policy where they simply follow the naming conventions of the GNIS seems not merely sensible but utterly uncontroversial ... until now.

There are three countries in the world that don’t use the metric system as their official units of measure: the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar. I expect there will be fewer — namely, one — who go along with calling it the “Gulf of America”.

★ Tuesday, 28 January 2025