Why I'm Not Saying "Gulf of America"

antiwoke language policing

On Trump’s second inauguration day, one of the items on his urgent Day 1 agenda was to rename two natural features of the United States. He did this through an executive order called “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness”. The first was to restore the former name of Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. It was previously called Mt. McKinley and now will be again. The second was to rename the Gulf of Mexico to something totally new: the Gulf of America.

The Denali to McKinley rename doesn’t bother me much. It’s not a clear positive; Alaska’s state representatives oppose the rename, as Alaskans themselves prefer the name Denali. But Mt. McKinley has precedent as a previous name for the mountain. Denali is an older name and a beautiful name, but this rename comes from Trump’s personal affection for William McKinley as a tariff president, which I think is cute, even if historically misinformed. I hope it’s changed back to Denali, but I’m fine with it for this Trump term as a brief kitschy return.

On the other hand, the “Gulf of America” name change is hard to justify. The official justification is due to the Gulf’s importance to our country, it should be referred to as the Gulf of America, because that sounds more important. There’s also an unstated but deliberate slight to Mexico, by removing their country’s name from the Gulf to replace it with our own. It’s also intended to be patriotic. Having a large body of water with the name America might evoke national pride.

My strong opinion here is based on linguistic norms. No one has ever referred to the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” before. This wasn’t a rename Trump talked about often during his campaign; it wasn’t proposed until the weeks before his inauguration. Americans are not familiar with this term to refer to this body of water.

Changing an established name to a new one that it hasn’t been used before is hard, as anyone who’s watched the switch from Twitter to X Dot Com knows. It can happen, but it takes time. It happens more quickly in official institutions, with editors who have full-time jobs to review which names are used in writing, but in the day-to-day language of everyday people, it takes time to change. It takes work to change. I question the value of that work, and so I question the value of this rename.

Compared to a mountain in the cold, barren, unconnected northwest corner of America, the Gulf of Mexico comes up more often. So this second rename has been more noticeable.

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More interesting than the rename of the Gulf is how this rename became a power play to assert loyalty to the new regime. Because the new name is so unfamiliar, use of the name “Gulf of America” signals allegiance to Trump, because there’s no other reason to adopt it. It’s not a name anyone would naturally use otherwise.

Florida was the first state to use “Gulf of America” in its official documents, adopting it the day after Trump signed the executive order. A week later, Chevron started using it in earnings documents and on their official website. Google held out and did not change it on Google Maps until it was officially updated in the US Geographic Names government system. But as of this week they have, only for users in America. Wikipedia, a global nonprofit institution, has not yet changed the name of its Gulf of Mexico article, but Mike Solana is on Twitter (or X Dot Com) calling for them to do so, warning that otherwise there will be “a problem”. For weeks, similar calls were made to Google. People opened up their phone and screenshot Google Maps still showing “Gulf of Mexico” and posted online asking why the name hadn’t changed yet, to rack a few thousand likes from people who agreed with them.

This language policing is similar to the language policing done by the left, which was opposed by the same individuals when the left was in power. These same people often mocked the unnatural term “Latinx”, and mocked the insistence on “pregnant people” over “pregnant women”, and mocked the change from “Kiev” to “Kyiv”, to make the name of the Ukrainian capital sound less Russian. They disliked topdown changes to the language they were used to, when it was the other side imposing the rules.

But now, with the old regime politically defeated, the language policing for “Gulf of America” is as widespread as the policing for the old terms ever was. And the support more fervent given the timeline. This change was announced last month, but so many people already know about it, and insist upon using the new name. It would take years for a term like “Latinx” to trickle through the old bureaucracy and into the vocabulary of individuals, but we move fast now.

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Even though support for “Gulf of America” appears fervent and widespread, my read is that most people secretly don’t care. The language policing feels insincere. I think for many people this isn’t a subject they’re passionate about, but rather something to scroll past. Change is interesting. Internet language is often based on subtle vocabulary changes that signal belonging to specific groups. When one is endorsed by a political entity as powerful as the US Executive Branch, it gains even more significance. So, more than a sincere belief in the patriotic future empowered by “Gulf of America”, this is a fun subject to talk about on their phones, to see who is being being loyal to the new regime, through the same linguistic games they play every day.

“Gulf of America” is a bad rename, but if people truly cared about it, that would be better. For the renames that were supported by the old regime, many of the old elites sincerely believed the new words were more respectful or accurate. There were many others who didn’t sincerely believe in the terms and used them because they thought they should, or to signal loyalty. Still, a larger percentage of people cared about the changes for the real reasons, even if the reasoning wasn’t correct. My sense is that for “Gulf of America”, fewer people care, and supporting the rename is primarily about showing linguistic support for their winning side.

I think language policing is wrong at a fundamental level. If someone uses “Gulf of Mexico”, accidentally or intentionally, it shouldn’t be an issue. It shouldn’t even be noted. It’s the name it went by a month ago. People need time to learn new terms, and officially decreed language needs time to be accepted by the public. It also doesn’t matter if someone uses the wrong term here, because the old term is familiar to most people. There won’t be confusion to what body of water anyone is referring to.

But avoiding misunderstanding is not the point of this language policing, so of course the focus of the language policers is not on context, or forgiveness, or patience. The point of the policing is the policing. The point is to assess loyalty. Given the context of their opposition to the language policing of the prior regime, I don’t think that’s good. The new reigning culture should not adopt the criticized games of the old one and play them worse, with less spirit and less commitment.