The state of Alaska requested the name change in 1975, but the Board on Geographic Names didn’t take action. Members of the Ohio congressional delegation – President William McKinley was from Ohio – objected over many years to requests to rename the mountain, and the board did not act on those requests.
While the Gulf of America will be applied to federal references, other nations will not be required to recognize the name.
This comes after President Trump signed an executive order on Inauguration Day that ordered the name Mt. McKinley be reinstated and the Gulf of Mexico be renamed.
Google Maps said it would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America once it is officially updated in the U.S. Geographic Names System.
Google will rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America and restore Denali in Alaska, the highest peak in North America, to its previous name, Mount McKinley.
The change will only be visible to U.S. users. Those in Mexico will still see “Gulf of Mexico,” while those in the rest of the world will see both names on the map.
Trump also renamed Denali, North America’s tallest peak, as Mount McKinley, despite objections from Alaska’s senators.
President Donald Trump has the power to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, but whether people will call it that is an open question.
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.
Trump signed an executive order the day of his inauguration, saying the gulf was “ours” and that it should be renamed alongside the tallest peak in North America. The order moved to rename Denali in Alaska — which has been known as such since 2015 — back to Mount McKinley. Denali is the peak’s Alaska Native name.