Donald Trump says he will change name of Gulf of Mexico

Presidentelect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would move to try to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America a name he said has a beautiful ring to it Its his latest suggestion to redraw the map of the Western Hemisphere Trump has repeatedly referred to Canada as the 51st State demanded that Denmark consider ceding Greenland and called for Panama to return the Panama CanalHeres a look at his comment and what goes into a nameWhy is Trump talking about renaming the Gulf of MexicoSince his first run for the White House in 2016 Trump has repeatedly clashed with Mexico over a number of issues including border security and the imposition of tariffs on imported goods He vowed then to build a wall along the USMexico border and make Mexico pay for it The US ultimately constructed or refurbished about 450 miles of wall during his first termThe Gulf of Mexico is often referred to as the United States Third Coast due to its coastline across five southeastern states Mexicans use a Spanish version of the same name for the gulf El Golfo de MeacutexicoAmericans and Mexicans diverge on what to call another key body of water the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua Coahuila Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas Americans call it the Rio Grande Mexicans call it the Rio BravoCan Trump change the name of the Gulf of MexicoMaybe but its not a unilateral decision and other countries dont have to go alongThe International Hydrographic Organisation of which both the United States and Mexico are members works to ensure all the worlds seas oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted uniformly and also names some of them There are instances where countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names in their own documentationIt can be easier when a landmark or body of water is within a countrys boundaries In 2015 thenPresident Barack Obama approved an order from the Department of Interior to rename Mount McKinley the highest peak in North America to Denali a move that Trump has also said he wants to reverseJust after Trumps comments on Tuesday Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said during an interview with podcaster Benny Johnson that she would direct her staff to draft legislation to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico a move she said would take care of funding for new maps and administrative policy materials throughout the federal governmentHow did the Gulf of Mexico get its nameThe body of water has been depicted with that name for more than four centuries an original determination believed to have been taken from a Native American city of MexicoHas renaming the Gulf of Mexico come up beforeYes In 2012 a member of the Mississippi Legislature proposed a bill to rename portions of the gulf that touch that states beaches Gulf of America a move the bill author later referred to as a joke That bill which was referred to a committee did not passTwo years earlier comedian Stephen Colbert had joked on his show that following the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico it should be renamed Gulf of America because We broke it we bought itAre there other international disputes over the names of placesTheres a longrunning dispute over the name of the Sea of Japan among Japan North Korea South Korea and Russia with South Korea arguing that the current name wasnt commonly used until Korea was under Japanese rule At an International Hydrographic Organisation meeting in 2020 member states agreed on a plan to replace names with numerical identifiers and develop a new digital standard for modern geographic information systemsThe Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century although usage of Gulf and Arabian Gulf is dominant in many countries in the Middle East The government of Iran threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the companys decision not to label the body of water at all on its mapsThere have been other conversations about bodies of water including from Trumps 2016 opponent According to materials revealed by WikiLeaks in a hack of her campaign chairmans personal account former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2013 told an audience that by Chinas logic that it claimed nearly the entirety of the South China Sea then the US after World War II could have labelled the Pacific Ocean the American Sea