Google announced that it was planning to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Denali in its Google Maps service, following President Donald Trump’s executive order last week officially renaming the geographical features to the “Gulf of America” and “Mount McKinley.” The controversial name changes were signed into law by executive order on Trump’s first day in office last week. “We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google said in a statement posted on X. The tech giant said it follows the Geographic Names Information System for its place names in Google Maps. The database is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey, part of the Department of the Interior. In a press release on Friday, the department said it was “working expeditiously” to implement the name changes in the GNIS. But as of Monday evening, both Google Maps and the GNIS still listed both features by their original, pre-Trump order names. After the names change in the USGS database, “we will update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America,” the company said. However, Google Maps users abroad will likely still see the legacy names in parentheses, the company said. “When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.”
