Summary
Rep. Dan Crenshaw criticized Apple Maps for not renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, as mandated by Trump’s recent executive order titled “Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness.”
Crenshaw’s complaint reflects broader conservative frustration, as tech platforms and the global community continue to use the original name.
Critics compare the move to past nationalist gestures like renaming french fries “freedom fries,” accusing conservatives of embracing identity politics and culture wars despite their political dominance.
The name change is unlikely to gain international traction.
They want an efficient government not wasting time and resources on unnecessary things …
They get a government crying over the name of a body of water.
It’s a very important body of water, ok?!
It will be a body of oil soon enough. Then the world will probably get on board with the new name.
This is one of the worst things of this asshole’s term.
We’re living in a climatic emergency that is going to affect the world forever, reaching a tipping point, and this bastard and his voters are working to accelerate the proccess while the rest of the world tries to fight it. At this point, my only wish is that things like the Los Angeles fires spread in that shithole of a country until there’s nothing left.
Innocents will pay, but so are we, who couldn’t even vote there and will be “enjoying” his actions as if we did.
Indeed. It is the hurricane class five generating hot tub. How else could nature teach the most boneheaded MAGA-brains that climate change and global warming is real but by depopulating the coastal states…
Oh, no, it doesn’t work that way for them. See, if a natural disaster strikes a blue city/area, it’s god doling out punishment for their wickedness. If a natural disaster strikes a red city/area, it’s god testing their faith because he loves them so much.
Their God sounds like a dick
You don’t say?
Rename to gulf of Huracán to better represent what it does and the local storm god.
They’ll be blaming the gays anyway.
Their job is to do nothing and cede power and influence to unregulated, uncontrolled private interests of billionaires. It is now, was last week, and was years back. It is the merging and takeover of state power by corporate power.
And, as you no doubt already know, that merger has a name. But maybe it’s Roman inspired…
They say they want an efficient government not wasting time and resources on unnecessary things. What they actually want is a government that makes them feel superior to all the people they’ve been convinced to hate, in this case Mexicans and Leftists. Trump knows this, and gives them what they want so that he can get what he wants, which is free reign to exploit his position and his country for profit while his loyal voter base blindly supports his efforts to usher in their demise.
As someone who worked in mapping, many people don’t realize how much this kind of BS actually comes up.
The map you see in Google / Apple maps isn’t the map the whole world sees. What you see is what’s culturally / legally appropriate for viewers in your region.
For example, in parts of India it’s legally required that Jammu and Kashmir be displayed as being part of India on their maps. On Pakistan’s maps it’s legally required to be weirdly ambiguous, with a strange open border that doesn’t properly close. The rest of the world gets dotted lines indicating it’s complicated.
For most of the world the body of water between Korea, Japan and Vladivostok is labeled as “The Sea of Japan”, but users in Korea will see “The East Sea”. Is the body of water around Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, etc. the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf? Depends on where you are when you ask that question.
This even has a strange effect when all the countries involved agree that a certain geographic feature is the border, but that geographic feature is a river. Some rivers, especially ones like the Amazon river keep shifting. Sediment piles up, erosion happens, and the river shifts. The river is still the border, but now someone has to go in and adjust the political border to match the river’s new position.
So, if Trump does do something official to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the online mapping companies (and any offline ones that are left) will probably follow the rule and rename it… for their American users. The rest of the world will still see it as the Gulf of Mexico. It will just be yet another one of those funny exceptions the companies have to keep track of while displaying maps for a certain subset of users.
The rest of the world will still see it as the Gulf of America.
of Mexico** I guess?
Er, yeah, that.
Thanks btw, really informative!
Sorry if this has been asked elsewhere, but who even has the legal right to rename the gulf? It doesn’t belong to USA, right? So we can’t just rename it, right? If we did, everybody else in the world would keep calling it The Gulf of Mexico, right?
Every sovereign state can publish maps require everyone to use it as reference for further publication in its own territory. Hence you’ll see different maps on Google for different regions. There’s a UN committee to coordinate these and also to publish international water area names.
If we did, everybody else in the world would keep calling it The Gulf of Mexico, right?
Most countries don’t call it “The Gulf of Mexico”. For example in my country it’s “Mexický záliv”.
Did you know that Confucius was one of the rudest people to ever live? He never said “thank you” or “please” in his entire life.
Point is this is just Golf of Mexico in another language. Maybe not 100% literal, but it associates the site with the country Mexico, not America (which Mexico is a part of, but I’m not sure MAGAts understand or want to understand the nuance).
Mexico is a part of the continent of America. Not the country. Devil’s in the details and all.
I never claimed otherwise 😉 a country named “America” doesn’t exist to my knowledge.
The point is that the Czech name for the gulf has nothing to do with how Americans are calling it, it’s not even the same language. Why should be care Trump calls it different? He’s not our president, you know.
Yeah, it’s not like we English speakers call Germany Deutschland. And it’s not like we call the Persian Gulf the Iranian gulf after Iran changed it’s name.
To a certain degree countries respect other countries’ rights to nominative self determination. It’s actually pretty similar to how we respect people’s nominative self determination. When a country we interact with regularly significantly changes their name we generally adapt, but we typically do so in our own language, and we often don’t bother if they don’t mind the nickname we use.
Geographic features on the other hand, we usually need a good reason. There’s a reason they’re typically officially called whatever they’re actually called. The back and forth over the naming of Denali is weird in part because most Americans barely remembered it’s existence between name changes.
In the US, it’s the Board on Geographic Names.
I just checked there, and they have not renamed it, nor have they listed the new name as a recognized alternate name.
Whether of not an executive order can override the government agency specifically granted that authority by congress is of no concern to them. By law, the Board of Geographic Names is the final authority on geographic names. If they don’t go along with this change, then the Trump admin would have to file an inter-government lawsuit about it.
Should rename it the Persian gulf or the Arab gulf and watch as people get even more confused.
I couldn’t care less what the name of that gulf is, however, Trump is right when he says that the US is the ONLY country that pumps money into that entire region. We protect it, monitor it, and it all comes out of American tax dollars. Mexico is just riding our coat tails. I can see why he’d want to change it. Also, the name “Gulf of America” technically includes Mexico…
We freeload off of Mexico. They give us about $160 billion more dollars in goods and services than we give them. They give us about $467 billion worth of stuff, and in return we give them about $309 billion in stuff. In exchange we mostly give them IOUs and other pieces of paper.
Oh, and that’s before we talk about the billions of dollars we steal from the Mexican government. Think of all the talented workers that move from Mexico to the US. That’s millions of people raised and educated on the backs of Mexican taxpayers, who come to the US and never contribute a penny to the Mexican economy.
The US is a giant leech sucking the Mexican economy dry.
Is this what small government looks like? I thought these guys were all about reducing regulations and allowing businesses to do as they please, free from government restrictions.
I thought these guys were all about reducing regulations
Did you really? Be honest.
You don’t understand. They should be free of your restrictions, you should be bound by their restrictions.
Google also didn’t. Oof.
Cause most google users aren’t americans and the mental illness of a few sex criminals would disrupt their service.
It doesn’t matter who their customers are, Google is a us based company.
However, hopefully they are able to depose, delay, deny this ridiculousness
Executive orders mean shit, show me all the freedom fries in american stores.
Users with other languages will see a different name anyway.
That post also prompted me to check Google maps, and I got Gulf of Mexico, thankfully. However I’m sure there will soon be a US version with the proper denomination so that the new masters of the land can be placated.
Whoever obeys Nazis, I will boycott your platform. Plain and simple.
Who’s gonna tell him?
The earliest known use of the name America dates to April 25, 1507, when it was applied to what is now known as South America. It is generally accepted that the name derives from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer, who explored the new continents in the following years on behalf of Spain and Portugal, with the name given by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller.
Brazilians also Americans.
Venezuelans also Americans.
Canadians? Yep Americans
Having a step dad from Buenos Aires, I’m offended you forgot Argentina. But they have their own kind of crazy MAGA there, currently…
I remember Buenos Aires! I’m doing my part!
That’s a whole debate people from the US are not ready for
So it should really be “Ameriga”?
Waldseemüller
It’s a good thing the continent wasn’t named after him instead!
Then again, having a swim in the Gulf of Waldseemüller sounds kind of nice.
For all the non-Germans, Herr Waldseemüller or one of his ancestors probably was a miller at a lake in the forest. That’s what the components of his name say, and we already have a body of water here.
The Gulf of Mexico didn’t choose its supposed new name. This is not deadnaming. Unless there is a positive definition of the word that I’m not aware of, this attempt to rename is the opposite of the meaning. The use of the deadnaming in this context trivializes and distorts what it means. Shame on Gizmodo.EDIT: Sorry, didn’t pick up on the sarcasm.
Its making fun of how Conservatives will deadname actual people but then throw a hissy fit when folks dont immediately change how they refer to something of little relevance. Its drawing attention to their braindead hypocrisy.
Gotcha, thanks for the good-faith explanation. Sometimes I have a hard time picking up on sarcasm. Fuck them reactionary nazis.
Honestly they do this shit every couple of decades usually with food for some fucking reason, best two examples are “Liberty sandwich” with hamburgers and “Freedom fries” with French fries.
Apple is not beholden to executive orders… No private company is.
I mean yes they could be if the order affected them. I mean as everyone famously says they are beholden to the rules of the country they are in.
EOs are not laws and can only direct the federal government’s actions. The President has no authority to unilaterally control a company, except for scenarios where it is interacting with the federal government. Just like the “two genders” EO, it only applies to the federal government. States and companies can continue to support non-binary and other options for sex and gender identity.
One can more or less envision the President as the CEO of Federal Government, Inc. and executive orders as internal memos to the employees.
If you don’t work there, following the memo is not your problem.
But if you do any kind of business with someone who does work there, you can be hit by the secondhand effects.
No, executive orders are not laws, and they apply only to the federal government. The reason for that is the president is not a king, and so their word cannot be law. That requires congress to make the law, and the Supreme Court to uphold it, if that law is challenged.
I’m waiting to hear what they want to do with New Mexico
Rename it to New America then in 4 years whine about New America trying to steal the light from old America because Democrats
Only after they deport all the new Mexicans
Surprised he hasn’t tried to slap his name on something by EO yet, like a blue state.
“New York is such a weak name-- you know it, I know it-- I had an uncle that went to New York folks, great man, smart man. He told me once with tears in his eyes, New York could be great, but it’s so sad, could be great though. So it needs a biglier name, powerful name, not weak, powerful. From today I’ve decided it’s now called, Trump Trork.”
Fuck Gizmodo, making trans insults into a joke with that headline.
I’m trans myself and I kinda like it, flip the script, use the Right’s own spells and logic against them! Make THEM the libs who get owned.
Yeah? I can see that… thanks
Personally lately I’ve been posting explanations of the science of gender, intersexed people, gender dysphoria, and studies back them up to transphobes and following them up with a “Facts don’t care about your feelings!”
Personal liberty means I get to decide for my body. And if you don’t like it well last I heard the supreme court and constitution say I have other rights to use in case of tyranny.
Republicans upset that nobody respects their name change? Huh. Snowflakes.
