Summary
Google Maps will rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” for U.S. users following a U.S. government decision.
The U.S. Department of Interior recently announced the official name change, implemented by the Board on Geographic Names.
Google stated it updates names based on official government sources.
The name will remain “Gulf of Mexico” in Mexico and display both names elsewhere globally.
This change stems from an executive order by Trump, who also reversed the 2015 renaming of Alaska’s Denali to Mount McKinley.
Honestly, it’s the other way around for me. To be clear, Denali is a much better name than Mount McKinley for multiple reasons, but at least it’s our mountain and it was named Mount McKinley at one time.
Gulf of America is just a dumb power move that came out of nowhere, and it’s a body of water shared by multiple countries. It’s not like this is the only gulf named after only one country it touches out of a few - see also the Gulf of Oman and Gulf of Thailand, for example