President-elect Donald Trump stated Tuesday he would transfer to attempt to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” a reputation he stated has a “lovely ring to it.”
It’s his newest suggestion for redrawing the map of the Western Hemisphere. Trump has repeatedly referred to Canada because the “51st State,” requested Denmark to think about ceding Greenland and requested Panama to return the Panama Canal.
Here’s a have a look at his remark and what’s behind a reputation.
Why is Trump speaking about renaming the Gulf of Mexico?
Since first working for the White House in 2016, Trump has repeatedly clashed with Mexico over a spread of points, together with border safety and the imposition of tariffs on imported items. He then promised to construct a wall alongside the U.S.-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it. The United States finally constructed or renovated about 450 miles of wall throughout his first time period.
The Gulf of Mexico is also known as the “Third Coast” of the United States due to its shoreline that runs by 5 southeastern states. Mexicans use a Spanish model of the identical identify for the gulf: “El Golfo de México.”
Americans and Mexicans diverge over the best way to outline one other key physique of water, the river that marks the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Americans name it Rio Grande; Mexicans name it Rio Bravo.
Can Trump change the identify of the Gulf of Mexico?
Perhaps, however it isn’t a unilateral choice and different international locations should not required to comply with it.
The International Hydrographic Organization – of which each the United States and Mexico are members – works to make sure that the entire world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are uniformly surveyed and mapped, and even names a few of them. There are instances the place international locations discuss with the identical physique of water or landmark by completely different names of their documentation.
It could also be simpler when a landmark or physique of water is inside a rustic’s borders. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama authorised an Interior Department order to rename Mount McKinley — the very best peak in North America — to Denali, a transfer Trump has additionally stated he desires to reverse.
Soon after Trump’s feedback on Tuesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia stated throughout an interview with podcaster Benny Johnson that she would direct her workers to draft a invoice to alter the identify of the Gulf of Mexico, a transfer which she stated would deal with funding for brand spanking new maps and coverage supplies throughout the federal authorities.
How did the Gulf of Mexico get its identify?
The physique of water has been depicted by that identify for greater than 4 centuries, an unique dedication believed to have been made by a Native American city in “Mexico.”
Has the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico been talked about earlier than?
YES. In 2012, a member of the Mississippi legislature proposed a invoice to rename the parts of the gulf that contact that state’s seashores “America’s Gulf,” a transfer that the invoice’s creator later referred to as a ” joke”. The invoice, referred to committee, didn’t cross.
Two years earlier, comic Stephen Colbert had joked on his present that, following the large Deepwater Horizon oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico, it must be renamed the “Gulf of America” as a result of “We broke it, the we purchased.”
Are there some other worldwide disputes over place names?
There is a long-standing dispute over the identify of the Sea of Japan between Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and Russia, with South Korea claiming that the present identify was not generally used till Korea was below Japanese. At a gathering of the International Hydrographic Organization in 2020, member states agreed on a plan to exchange names with numerical identifiers and develop a brand new digital commonplace for contemporary geographic data methods.
The Persian Gulf has been extensively recognized by this identify for the reason that sixteenth century, though using “Gulf” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in lots of Middle Eastern international locations. The Iranian authorities threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the corporate’s choice to not label the physique of water on its maps in any respect.
There have been different conversations about water our bodies, together with by Trump’s 2016 opponent. According to supplies revealed by WikiLeaks in a hack of the president’s private account from his marketing campaign, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2013 he stated in an viewers that, in line with the logic of China claiming nearly all the South China Sea, then the United States after the World War I might have labeled the Pacific Ocean because the “American Sea”.
Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina.
