Donald Trump Says Gulf of Mexico Will Now Be Called 'Gulf of America.' Congress Is Already Prepping Legislation
Donald Trump Says Gulf of Mexico Will Now Be Called 'Gulf of America.' Congress Is Already Prepping Legislation
During a press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 7, the 78-year-old president-elect shared his plan for renaming the Gulf of Mexico. “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump told reporters.
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Besides the absurdity of this, who gets to decide the name of a geographical feature?
If this were to actually happen wouldn’t it mean literally nothing? Like maybe officially in the USA it would be referred to by its new name but why would other countries follow? And I get that that the USA does a lot in the Gulf, but from my [very basic] understanding most of it is international waters.
Could legislation be proposed to rename the Atlantic Ocean? And if so wouldn’t that just end up with the USA following strange semantics other countries don’t?
Countries can decide internally to call something whatever they want. One example is how not everyone in the world agrees on how many continents there are and uses some different names (like Eurasia). A more relevant case is how most of the world calls the ocean between Japan and Korea the Sea of Japan, whereas Koreans call it the East Sea.
Everyone can call geographical features however they like in principle.
There's something similar here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute
If America doesn't have to adopt the metric system they sure as shit don't have to name everything the same.