The Gulf of Mexico has been called the Gulf of Mexico since well before a bunch of plucky colonies along our Atlantic coast decided to stop being a cash cow for the king of England.
It’s been the Gulf of Mexico longer than Mexico has been Mexico.
Last week, with a slash of his Sharpie, President Donald Trump decreed that the gulf shall henceforth be known as the Gulf of America. But it’s unclear how well that notion will float.
Google announced Monday that it will add the new name to Google Maps as soon as it’s acknowledged by the Geographic Names Information System, a process that usually takes a few months. We’ll see “Gulf of America” on the app in the U.S., and the rest of the world will see both that and Gulf of Mexico.
In terms of usage, though, old names can be hard to displace, according to experts in such things and also according to everyone who spent 20 years not saying “DTE Energy Music Theatre.”
Much of the planet is likely to ignore our cartographical chest-pounding, the experts say, even if the new name winds up sharing space with Gulf of Mexico on some international maps. And if Mexico is feeling mischievous, the U.S. might have just opened a can of gusanos, as in worms.
“I don’t think the world will adopt it,” said Tim Utter of the University of Michigan. “It just seems like a not well thought out, temporary, pointless thing.”
As director of the Social Sciences and Clark Library team at U-M, Utter is in charge of an astonishing 420,000 maps harking back more than five centuries.
He recognizes that the name Gulf of Mexico first appeared on a world map around 1550, that it’s been standard since the 1600s, and that the term originated with the Aztecs, who referred to themselves as the Mēxihcah.
After Spaniards and their diseases wiped out millions of Aztecs, the name remained.
A controversy that’s all wet
Mexico declared its independence from Spain in 1821, and the United States was first in line to recognize the new country.
Now we’re the first and only nation to declare, by executive order, that because the gulf has lots of oil and shrimp and tourism, it’s of “critical importance to our Nation’s economy and its people,” and “I am directing that it officially be renamed the Gulf of America.”
The Gulf of America, then, will henceforth be the official site of any future oil spills within its 600,000-plus square miles, and the spawning ground of periodic hurricanes.
The term “America,” it should be noted, was first applied to South America, in tribute to Italian explorer and navigator Amerigo Vespucci. He was among the first Europeans to glean that Brazil was not Asia, but rather part of a previously unmapped continent.
“Latin Americans resent the tendency of the U.S. to monopolize the term ‘America,'” said Wayne State University assistant professor Carlos Hernandez, who teaches in the history department and the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies. “They refer to ‘U.S. Americans.'”
With the possible exception of a few countries with far-right governments, he said, Spanish-speaking nations are unlikely to recognize “Gulf of America.” The United Kingdom, where English is spoken but best experienced with subtitles, has already said it’s just fine with “Gulf of Mexico.”
The U.S. and Mexico have quietly disagreed before about geographic designations. We say the river that divides much of the two countries across Texas is the Rio Grande, and they prefer Rio Bravo.
Territorial disputes also play out on maps; what Japan calls the Sea of Japan, South Korea considers the East Sea.
What’s unique and peculiar about the Gulf of Suddenly Not Mexico, Hernandez said, is that the boundaries, ownership and history are not in dispute.
“Even during times of conflict,” he noted, “and throughout the colonial period,” no one ever took aim at the name of the gulf.
Keep in mind, he said, that “international politics are always an extension of domestic affairs.”
Trump campaigned on controlling immigration, and appears ready to label Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations as they battle authorities and one another with U.S. weapons over market share among U.S. consumers.
The goal, he suggested, is “creating an issue that never really existed” – the need to bolster national pride by pasting America’s name onto a body of water – “and then using that non-issue to pander to a base.”
Fighting water with water
By any name, the gulf is the world’s ninth-largest body of water. Not counting bays and inlets, its shoreline covers some 3,540 miles, more than half of it in Mexican terroritory and una pequeña cantidad − a small amount − in Cuba.
Dave Imus of Imus Geographics, whose award-winning maps include one he calls his Portrait of Michigan, said he’ll start printing the gulf’s new name as soon as it’s official, with “(Gulf of Mexico)” beneath it.
“But c’mon. Really?” he said. “Nobody was writing their congressperson or protesting outside federal buildings over this.”
He expects that someday − maybe early in the next president’s term − the name will change back.
“The rest of us,” he said, “will just keep calling it the Gulf of Mexico, I think.”
Unless, of course, Mexico decides to tweak back with a new name of its own. The Gulf of Pine Knob, if it wants to amuse Detroiters. Or the Gulf of Trump University, or maybe the gulf of that adult film actress.
On a smaller scale, there’s always the Gulf of California, between Baja California and the mainland, which despite its name is entirely Mexico’s to play with.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took the high road on the map front, joking that perhaps North America might be renamed America Mexicana.
The world, she said, will still recognize the Gulf of Mexico − and most of us will recognize that you don’t prove American exceptionalism by being exceptionally petty.
Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.