Latest news with #GeographicNamesInformationSystem
Straits Times
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Can Trump rename the Persian Gulf?
Mr Donald Trump has the power to order changes to geographical names as they are used in the US. But other countries do not have to honour those changes. PHOTO: EPA-EFE WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has floated changing the name of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Gulf ahead of a trip to the Middle East next week, a move that infuriated Iran and its people. 'I'll have to make a decision,' Mr Trump said in the Oval Office on May 7. 'I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. I don't know if feelings are going to be hurt.' This past week, The Associated Press reported that Mr Trump planned to announce the renaming on his tour of several Arab countries, which have been lobbying for the change for years. The turquoise blue water has been called the Persian Gulf since at least 550BC, when the Persian dynasty of Cyrus the Great ruled an empire that spanned from India to the edges of Western Europe. Ancient Persia is now modern-day Iran, and its entire southern coast stretches along the Persian Gulf. Iran's governments, going back to the prerevolution era of the shah, have stoutly defended Persian Gulf as the only legitimate name. So have Iranians inside and outside the country, who view the name as a core part of their national and cultural identity. By suggesting the name change, Mr Trump has seemingly done the impossible: Unite Iranians of all political, ideological and religious factions. They have spoken out in statements and social media posts, condemning Mr Trump's idea. Can Trump really rename the Gulf? Mr Trump has the power to order changes to geographical names as they are used in the US. But other countries do not have to honour those changes. In 2025, he issued an executive order to update the government's Geographic Names Information System in order to change all references to the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. On May 9, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government had sued Google over its decision to abide by Mr Trump's order. The US Board on Geographic Names currently mandates use of the Persian Gulf for official US business. Globally, the International Hydrographic Organization works to standardise and chart marine boundaries. But the organisation told The New York Times in 2205 that there was 'no formal international agreement or protocol in place for naming maritime areas'. How have Iranians reacted? Mr Trump's idea drew condemnation from a broad cross-section of Iranians, who are often divided on many topics. 'It goes beyond politics; it goes beyond religious divisions and ideologies – it's about the nation and its history, and it has hit a chord,' said historian Touraj Daryaee, director of the Centre for Persian Studies at the University of California, Irvine. 'Does Trump want to negotiate with Iran or does he want to take away its national identity?' Mr Daryaee said that since ancient times, Iranians have referred to their nation as 'ab o khakh' which means 'water and earth.' Two bodies of water – the Persian Gulf in the south and the Caspian Sea to the north – are deeply intertwined in the Iranian psyche as symbols of nationhood. Mr Ahmad Zeidabadi, a prominent analyst in Tehran, Iran's capital, posted on social media, 'Just because of Trump's wishes and whims, the Gulf of Mexico will not become the Gulf of America, Canada will not join the United States, Greenland will not become a possession of the United States, and the Persian Gulf will not take on a fake name.' Iran's national soccer team weighed in with a map of the Persian Gulf and a trending hashtag #ForeverPersianGulf on its official Instagram page. Even Iranian opposition figures expressed their displeasure. Mr Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah of Iran who supports Mr Trump and encouraged him to abandon diplomacy with the government in Tehran, said on social media, 'President Trump's reported decision to distort history, if true, is an insult to the Iranian people and our great civilization.' What's the history of the Persian Gulf? The Persian Gulf name has been used throughout history, in maps, documents and diplomacy, from the time of the ancient Persians, whose empire dominated the region, to the Greeks and the British. The push to call it the Arabian Gulf gathered steam during the Pan-Arab nationalist movement of the late 1950s. The United Nations uses the term the Persian Gulf. A 2006 paper by a UN working group found unanimity in historical documents on the term, which it said was coined by the Persian king Darioush in the fifth century BC Will this affect the Iran-US nuclear talks? Iran and the US have held three rounds of negotiations, mediated by Oman, on Iran's advancing nuclear program, and they were scheduled to meet again May 11. The US wants to prevent Iran from weaponising its nuclear program, and Iran wants to remove sanctions that have hobbled its economy. Mr Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian senior diplomat and member of the country's nuclear negotiating team in 2015, said if Mr Trump renamed the Persian Gulf, it would deliver a blow to the negotiations. 'It will just create mistrust and embolden the hard-liners in Iran who say you can't trust America,' Mr Mousavian said in an interview. NYTIMES Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Engadget
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Engadget
Mexico is suing Google over 'Gulf of America' name change for US users
The Mexican government has filed a lawsuit against Google for renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in Maps within the United States. Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said during a press conference that the lawsuit has already been filed, but as The Guardian notes, she didn't say when and where it was submitted. Sheinbaum argued that the Trump administration's order for a name change only applies to the US portion of the oceanic basin and that the US government doesn't have the authority to rename the whole body of water. "All we want is for the decree issued by the US government to be complied with," she said. Google renamed the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America for users who open Maps in the US back in February. It first announced that it was going to do so the previous month and said it was only waiting for the US government to make the change official in the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), which serves as the "federal and national standard for geographic nomenclature." BBC said the Mexican government wrote to Google at the time to get it to reconsider before eventually threatening legal action. When Google announced the name change for US users, it explained that it was following a longstanding practice to show official local names for places in Maps when they vary between countries. In Mexico, the basin is still called the Gulf of Mexico, while it shows up as "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)" for users outside both countries.
New York Times
14-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Denali Will Always Be Denali
In 1896, a gold prospector named William Dickey led a journey through what he called the 'wonderful wilderness' of Alaska, where he glimpsed an enormous mountain that compelled his 'unbounded admiration.' When he emerged from the Alaskan interior, the first news he heard was that William McKinley, the former governor of Ohio, had received the Republican nomination for president. And so, in the kind of random act that so often accompanies the colonial naming of geographic 'discoveries,' Dickey and his comrades decided to bestow the name McKinley upon the huge peak. It caught on enough that Congress made the name official in 1917 when it created Mount McKinley National Park. But the mountain — the tallest in North America, scraping the sky at 20,310 feet — had already held another name for centuries. In Koyukon, a language of the Athabaskan people for whom the mountain plays a central role in their creation story, it is known as 'the high one' or 'the great one': Denali. In 2015 President Barack Obama officially restored that name, noting that McKinley had 'never set foot in Alaska' and that 'Denali is a site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska Natives.' What to call the mountain had been a matter of debate even before Congress officially named it 108 years ago. The British-born mountaineer Hudson Stuck, an Alaska transplant who was a leader of the 1913 expedition that first summited the peak, called for 'the restoration to the greatest mountain in North America of its immemorial native name' in his 1914 book, 'The Ascent of Denali.' He pointed out 'a certain ruthless arrogance' that 'contemptuously ignores the native names of conspicuous natural objects' that are 'almost always appropriate and significant, and overlays them with names that are, commonly, neither the one nor the other.' Now President Trump has done exactly that. In one of the first acts on his return to the White House, he issued an executive order restoring McKinley as the mountain's official name. (The national park that surrounds it will remain Denali National Park and Preserve; changing it would most likely require Congress to amend the law that gave the park that name in 1980.) The McKinley name change was recently entered into the government's Geographic Names Information System, which lists the official names and locations of geographic features in the United States. Which raises a question: Do we really need another mountain named McKinley? In addition to what used to be called Denali, there are at least a dozen other mountains or ridges in the country named McKinley, including in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Montana, New York, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and Washington, according to the Geographic Names Information System. Then again, William McKinley is a favorite of Mr. Trump, who has lauded that president's championing of tariffs and expansionism. During his tenure, Hawaii was annexed and Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were seized by the United States. 'He should be honored for his steadfast commitment to American greatness,' Mr. Trump asserted in his executive order. The president noted the name change in his recent address before Congress, adding, 'Beautiful Alaska, we love Alaska.' But Mr. Trump's decision has not gone over well with his crush. Even before he changed the name, a poll found Alaskans opposed it by a 2-to-1 margin. The State Legislature passed a resolution last month urging the president to reverse the decision. And the state's two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, are sponsoring legislation to rename the mountain. 'In Alaska, it's Denali,' Senator Murkowski said in a statement, Emily Edenshaw, president and chief executive of the Alaska Native Heritage Center, said that the name Denali 'reflects a profound spiritual and cultural relationship with the land' and 'recognizes the enduring contributions of Alaska Native peoples.' Before Mr. Obama's 2015 declaration, lawmakers in Alaska had been pushing for Denali as the mountain's official name for decades. In 1975, the governor and State Legislature formally requested that the Interior Department name the mountain Denali, but that effort and subsequent requests were blocked by the members of Congress from Ohio, McKinley's home state. Mr. Trump's decision to return to the McKinley name is a slap in the face of recent efforts to acknowledge America's history of colonialism and restore Indigenous place names. Mr. Trump's executive order also ignores the history that cemented the mountain's original name in our lexicon. Over the last century, the name Denali became entwined with mountaineering, the pursuit that made the peak famous outside Alaska, embossing its Koyukon Athabaskan name on American minds. General Motors even named one of its vehicles Denali. In June 1913, the Athabaskan Walter Harper became the first person to stand on Denali's summit as part of Stuck's expedition. The endeavor took three months, starting with dog sledding through subzero temperatures; navigating the thick boreal forest, braided rivers and huge glaciers that had stymied the expeditions that came before; and climbing the flanks of the mountain that rises 18,000 feet from its base — 6,000 feet more than Everest from its base. In 1970, the first all-women's team to ascend the mountain carried a flag to the summit emblazoned with the moniker 'Denali Damsels.' When President Obama used his executive power to officially call the peak Denali, he was only confirming the long reach of its Indigenous name. Regardless of Mr. Trump's efforts to force upon it the name of a president who had never even visited Alaska, the mountain has always been, and will always be, Denali.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google caught in crossfire over Gulf of America name change
Google has found itself back in the crosshairs of a geopolitical battle over President Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, raising fresh questions over the role technology companies can play in reinforcing political narratives. The company's decision to follow Trump's order on Google Maps quickly sparked backlash from Mexico, where leaders are now threatening legal action against the company. While this is not the first time since Google faced disputes over its geographical name changes, experts say this opens a Pandora's box of questions about how major tech companies help shape global narratives. 'Google, along with the other major platforms, wield enormous influence in how people perceive geography, history and political realities,' said Tobias Feakin, Australia's former inaugural ambassador for cyber affairs and critical technology. 'What appears on a map isn't just data, it shapes global narratives. When Google changes a name, it effectively validates a political stance, even if unintentionally,' he continued. Shortly after Trump's executive order to rename the body of water, the U.S. Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) made the change official, prompting Google Maps to follow suit for U.S. users. Those in the U.S. now only see the label 'Gulf of America' on the map, while users in Mexico see the name as the 'Gulf of Mexico,' and those elsewhere in the world will see 'Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).' Apple Maps and Bing Maps also updated their systems to align with the change. Google maintains it has a long-standing practice of applying name changes when they are updated in official government sources, as the GNIS did. In a case where official names vary between nations, users will see their official local names, according to Google's policy. Quickly resisting the change, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has threatened to file suit against Google, arguing Trump's executive order renaming the Gulf applied only to the area of the continental shelf under U.S. control. Sheinbaum on Monday suggested Google's move violated her country's sovereignty, but said she will wait until she gets another response from the tech company before moving forward with a suit. 'What Google is doing here is changing the name of the continental shelf of Mexico and Cuba, which has nothing to do with Trump's decree, which applied only to the U.S. continental shelf,' Sheinbaum told reporters Monday. Trump's order, titled 'Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness,' 'only changed the name within his own continental shelf,' she added. According to Sovereign Limits, a database of international boundaries, the U.S. has control over about 46 percent of the Gulf, while Mexico controls about 49 percent and Cuba about 5 percent. When asked about Sheinbaum's claim, a White House official pointed The Hill to the order's text, which states the Gulf of America label applies to 'the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.' The backlash against Google comes as technology companies continue to become more influential in broader society. With this growing power comes a larger role in geopolitics, or the ways geography impacts politics and foreign relations. 'Tech companies are no longer just participants in geopolitics, they are shaping it,' said Feakin, whose research examines geopolitics and its intersection with advanced and emerging technologies. 'The fact that a U.S. government decision was quickly reflected in Google's mapping services raises questions about digital sovereignty, particularly for countries like Mexico that contest the change,' he added. Digital sovereignty refers to how a nation or region yields control over its digital infrastructure and technology. Google, a global company, has found itself at a crossroads as it tries to balance the competing interests of various nations. Lowell Gustafson, a political science professor with a focus on Latin America, emphasized Google, at the end of the day, is still a business that needs to keep its financial interests in mind. 'They're protecting themselves. So, if I was given the power of being in charge of Google, what would I do in their circumstance? Would I endanger my own corporation, and what hill am I going to die on? What battle am I going to choose to fight?' he said. 'I think if I was in their spot, I would say this is a battle to fight another day. Trump won't be here forever.' The California-based company has tried to shield itself by deferring to official government definitions, but experts said this does not prevent questions from arising over what or whom they could be taking direction from. 'This case highlights a growing dilemma: Are tech companies neutral arbiters of information, or are they extensions of state power?' Feakin said. 'The more governments are realizing the strategic value of digital platforms, the more pressure these companies will face to take sides.' Google Maps is one of the most used map and navigation platforms, boasting more than 2 billion monthly users around the globe. The Trump administration has acted against other companies that are not using 'Gulf of America,' most notably The Associated Press, which has been banned from Air Force One and the Oval Office for refusing to use the term on first reference. The AP's style is to refer to the body of water on first reference as the Gulf of Mexico, because that is what it is called in other countries and is more familiar to many of the AP's readers, it says. It is not clear whether the Trump administration had any correspondence with Google, Apple or other mapping platforms about the changes. Nonetheless, it comes amid Silicon Valley's reconciling with Trump after years of tension as companies hope for favorable treatment in his second term. Google CEO Sundar Pichai was one of several tech leaders to attend Trump's inauguration in a move that was largely perceived as the tech industry's attempts to make headway with the president ahead of his second term. This is not the first time Google has stared down legal action over its map label choices. In 2012, Iran threatened to sue Google for not labeling the body of water separating Iran and neighboring Arab Gulf states on its maps platform. Iran called the body of water the Persian Gulf, while Arab countries typically refer to it as the Arabian Gulf. And in 2014 after Russia's annexation of Crimea, Google Maps in Russia showed Crimea as part of Russian territory, but in Ukraine and other parts of the world, Crimea was shown with no demarcated border between Ukraine and Russia. When asked whether Google Maps's move with the Gulf could set a precedent moving forward, Feakin expressed concerns other governments may be led to think pressure on tech companies could get them to comply with their preferences. 'The case could set a precedent where governments pressure tech companies to make digital borders and place names to match their geopolitical agendas. It could embolden other governments to push for the further renaming of disputed territories,' he said. 'It could lead to the suppression of historical place names in favor of politically motivated changes and more aggressive state control over digital representations of geography and history.' Amelia Kiddle, an associate professor of Latin American studies at the University of Calgary, suggested Google's move 'seems quite strange to the rest of the world,' while noting place names frequently change. Trump's order is a 'deliberate misrepresentation of the history to serve current political ends,' she said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Express Tribune
18-02-2025
- Express Tribune
Google Maps renames Gulf of Mexico to ‘Gulf of America' for US users
Listen to article Google Maps has renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America" for users in the United States following a formal name change by the Trump administration. The update, visible on both web and mobile versions of Google Maps, reflects a decision by the US government to modify the designation of the body of water located between the eastern coast of Mexico and the Florida Panhandle. Google said it follows the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), a US database of official location names. Photo: Google Maps says 'Gulf of America' and Apple Maps says 'Gulf of Mexico.' Users in Mexico will continue to see "Gulf of Mexico," while international users will see the original name with 'Gulf of America' in parentheses. Google determines a user's location through data from their mobile operating system, SIM card, and network settings. Desktop users may see variations based on search settings and device location. Apple Maps has not yet made any changes and still redirects searches for "Gulf of America" to the Gulf of Mexico. Other mapping services, including MapQuest, have not followed suit. Google-owned navigation app Waze displays both names when searching for the Gulf of Mexico but does not recognize searches for the "Gulf of America."
