Trump Renaming Gulf Of Mexico To ‘Gulf Of America.’ Here’s What He Can—And Can’t—Do.

• Trump’s order, titled Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness, also demanded the highest peak in North America, currently called Denali, be reverted back to the name Mount McKinley, the Alaska mountain’s name prior to 2015.

CAN TRUMP RENAME THE GULF OF MEXICO?

Yes and no. It’s within the federal government’s purview to change what landmarks are called within the Geographic Names Information System, but that’s an internal database that only impacts titles within the United States. The Office of the Secretary of the Interior does have the authority to change the names of American landmarks—former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, for instance, targeted the names of hundreds of places that included “derogatory” terms—but it can’t change the names of things outside of the country.

WILL OTHER COUNTRIES CALL IT THE GULF OF AMERICA?

Other nations don’t have to go along with the switch. When Trump first suggested the idea, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum responded sarcastically and proposed that North America should be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America.” Mexico’s refusal to use a different name will not impact Trump’s ability to have the body renamed on federal documents, but it likely means the new name won’t be officially used internationally unless both countries come to an agreement.

SURPRISING FACT

It wouldn’t be the first time countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names. Texas and Mexico refer to the river that divides the two nations along the Texas border differently: Americans call it the Rio Grande and Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo. The body of water between South Korea and Japan is called the “East Sea” by South Korea and the “Sea of Japan” by Japan. The name for the body of water that borders Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam—commonly known as the South China Sea—is also disputed. Some countries, like Vietnam, call it the “East Sea,” in China it’s the “South Sea” and other people in the region are advocating to call it “Southeast Asia Sea.” Even within the U.S. government, disagreements aren’t unheard of: Federal agencies generally refer to the crucial gulf between Iran and the Arabian peninsula as the Persian Gulf, but the military often calls it the Arabian Gulf—the name used by some of the U.S.’s top Arab defense allies, most of which are bitter rivals with Iran.