Jan. 27 (UPI) — Google will show Gulf of Mexico as “Gulf of America” and Alaska’s Denali as “Mount McKinley” in the United States once the U.S. government has officially updated to the U.S. Geographic Names Information System, the U.S. tech giant said Monday.
“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” it said in a statement on X.
Among President Donald Trump’s executive orders on his first day in office was one titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness” that directs the secretary of the Interior to change the names of Gulf of Mexico and Denali to “Gulf of America” and “Mount McKinley” within 30 days.
On Friday, the Interior Department announced it was implementing the controversial name changes.
“These changes reaffirm the Nation’s commitment to preserving the extraordinary heritage of the United States and ensuring that future generations of Americans celebrate the legacy of its heroes and historic assets,” the department said in a statement.
Google suggested its announcement on Monday was in response to questions it has since received about naming within its popular Google Maps, and that it will make the change once they are updated to the USGNIS.
“When that happens, we will update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America,” it said.
Google — whose chief executive officer, Sundar Pichai, was among the tech billionaires in attendance last week for Trump’s inauguration — added that both names of the geographic features will be displayed throughout the rest of the world.
According to the Department of the Interior, the Gulf of Mexico is among the United States’ most vital historical and economic assets, spanning more than 1,700 miles of U.S. coastline. It is home to fish and vast oil and natural gas reserves.
Trump first raised wanting to change the name of Gulf of Mexico during his campaign. In response, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo jested that the United States should then be renamed Mexican America.
“Why don’t we call it Mexican America?” she said in a press conference on Jan. 8 earlier this month before a projection of a map produced in 1607 that shows Mexican America as the name of what is now called the United States.
“It sounds nice, doesn’t it? Right?”
His move to rename Denali has also received pushback, including from members of his own Republican Party.
The Alaskan mountain — the highest peak in North America, was officially named Mount McKinley after President William McKinley in 1917, but was renamed to its traditional native name of Denali, meaning “Great One,” by the Obama administration in 2015.
Alaska had formally requested it to be called Denali in 1975.
Alaska’s two Republican senators — Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski — have pushed back against renaming the mountain.
“For years, I advocated in Congress to restore the rightful name for this majestic mountain to respect Alaska’s first people who have lived on these lands for thousands of years. This is an issue that should not be relitigated,” Murkowski said in a statement from December.
