(The Hill) – Google said on Monday that it will change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” in Google Maps once it is updated in the U.S. Geographic Names System.
Google Maps will also change the name of Denali in Alaska to “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,” the company said in an X post.
But users in other countries will see both names displayed on the map in line with a long standing practice, the company said.
President Donald Trump ordered the name changes the day of his inauguration last week, making good on his campaign promise. The federal government has since formally implemented the directive to rename both.
The Gulf of Mexico change is new, but naming the nation’s highest peak has been a matter of debate for years.
The Obama administration decided to formally name it Denali in 2015, the name that local Natives once used.
Former President McKinley, for whom the mountain is once again named, never visited Alaska. His name was first used for the summit in an article written by a gold prospector in 1897 and was popularized after his 1901 assassination.
The Hill has reached out to Google for comment.
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