Whose gulf is it anyway? Mexico has a longer shoreline, but policing is all American

The Gulf of Mexico, by any other name, would be just as wet.

President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal to call it the Gulf of America has sparked a feverish debate over who has the authority to name geography and when it should be changed.

Mr. Trump says the U.S. has earned the right to mastery of the Gulf’s name.

“The Gulf of America. What a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate,” he said.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum responded with another idea: that the United States should be renamed “Mexican America” to align with a 1607 map.

Experts said Mr. Trump is barreling into a thicket.

“Currently, the Gulf of Mexico signals to students that the United States shares ocean space, resources, and a shared destiny with another country and region,” said Derek Alderman, a professor in the Department of Geography & Sustainability at the University of Tennessee.

“To adopt the Gulf of America prioritizes U.S. nationalism, economic interests and prestige over communicating international interdependence at a time when we want students to be more geopolitically aware and engaged,” he said.

Mr. Alderman said part of the reason the issue is thorny is the long history of geographic places renamed by political leaders to “exercise power and project a world vision supportive of their ideology.”

“Names for places have long been used as political tools for symbolizing ownership and control over territory,” he said. “At its heart, to name a place is to claim that place.”

Mr. Trump would heartily agree. He and his allies say the U.S. polices Gulf waters to keep them safe for everyone, including Mexico.

Mexico has slightly more shoreline than the U.S. and is included in the Gulf’s name on maps dating back to the 1500s.

The U.S. has emerged from a rash of Black Lives Matter-inspired cleansing of names from the Civil War and segregation, including streets, schools and nine military bases.

Some people who pushed those renamings are skeptics of Mr. Trump’s Gulf of America gambit.

A dispute ended with a compromise when Burma was renamed Myanmar in 1989.

Lovell Johns, a leading mapping company in Britain, said some nations did not recognize the ruling party’s change, so maps started including both names, with one in parentheses.

“By using a neutral tone like this, all map users are satisfied,” the mapmaker said on its website.

Ukraine decided in 1995 that its capital city should be transliterated as Kyiv. The new spelling became widespread 20 years later, and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names didn’t switch from Kiev to Kyiv until 2019.

More recently, the board declared that Turkiye is the better moniker for the country after the Turkish government asked the United Nations for the change in 2022. Most people and spellchecker systems still know it as Turkey.

Mr. Alderman said that even if Mr. Trump prevails with the Gulf, government officials, news outlets and scientists worldwide do not have to adopt the change. Indeed, it could become a rallying point for Trump resisters.

“It is quite possible, if not expected, that opposing mapmakers, journalists and educators might choose to retain the Gulf of Mexico moniker,” Mr. Alderman said.

That sort of resistance also has a long history.

When Republicans added the name Ronald Reagan to Washington National Airport in 1998, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority refused to change its subway signs and maps until Congress ordered it in 2001.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, has written legislation for Mr. Trump’s proposal.

“It’s our gulf. The rightful name is the Gulf of America, and it’s what the entire world should refer to it as,” she said.

Democratic leaders mocked the idea as “strange” and “rather random.”

“Donald Trump is in over his head, so he’s doing what he always does in times like this: distract America with crazy ideas,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat. “Renaming the Gulf of Mexico may be a zany new idea, but it isn’t going to help people save money at the grocery store.”

Mr. Trump could pursue the change through the Board on Geographic Names.

“There must, however, be a compelling reason to change it,” the group’s website says. “The BGN is responsible by law for standardizing geographic names throughout the Federal Government and discourages name changes unless there is a compelling reason.

“Further, changing an existing name merely to correct or re-establish historical usage should not be a primary reason to change a name,” it says.

The board’s review process mandates that it work with the “appropriate Canadian or Mexican names authorities” when a proposal relates to an international boundary with either country.

If the U.S. renames the Gulf of Mexico, the rest of the world is not obliged to follow.