Google announced on Monday via X that its Google Maps system will be updated in the United States to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” per President Donald Trump’s executive order that was signed last week.
“We’ve received a few questions about naming within Google Maps. We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google’s post reads.
The company added in a second post that it will “update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America.”
The executive order would ensure that all federal references including on agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications will be renamed to the “Gulf of America,” the order reads.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum spoke up on Thursday about Google’s announcement, stating that the United States cannot change the name of a body of water shared with Cuba and Mexico, Reuters reported.
The Mexican government said the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea dictates that an individual country’s sovereign territory only extends up to 12 nautical miles out from the coastline, Sheinbaum added, according to USA Today.
“If a country wants to change the designation of something in the sea, it would only apply up to 12 nautical miles,” Sheinbaum said Thursday, according to the Latin Times. “It cannot apply to the rest, in this case, the Gulf of Mexico. This is what we explained in detail to Google.”