Following Trump’s decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, find out more about naming disputes across the world…
Earlier this month, President Trump made headlines after signing an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Already, steps have been made to alter the territory on online maps. While keeping the name the same for its Mexican and Cuban audiences, Google have announced that they plan to rename the territory on Google Maps as ‘Gulf of America’ for US users – and elsewhere, display both names on its maps.
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The changes have caused controversy across the world, with Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo asking the tech giant to not go ahead with its plans of altering the Gulf of Mexico’s name, arguing that the US cannot legally change it due to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
As tensions over the Gulf of Mexico continue to rise, here we look at other territories, countries and seas across the world which have sparked disputes over their names…
India
In India’s constitution, the country is known as either India or Bharat. A third name, Hindustan, can also be used to describe the country – although not legally recognised – and all three are used by the public and officials alike.
But there has long been efforts to change India’s name to Bharat, an ancient Sanskirt term, thus removing any references to ‘India’ from the constitution. However, petitions to do this in both 2016 and 2020 were dismissed by the Supreme Court.
The debate re-emerged in headlines at a G20 meeting back in 2023, when India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was referred to as the ‘President of Bharat’. His political party, the Bharatiya Janata, believe the name ‘India’ is linked to both slavery and colonialism.
While Modi, along with other ministers – and even some Bollywood stars – are in support of changing India’s name to Bharat, no official name change has been made as of yet.
Persian Gulf versus Arabian Gulf
Naming the body of water that lies between the Iranian Plateau and the Arabian Peninsula – and is bordered by eight nations – has sparked much controversy. Historically, the region has been known as the Persian Gulf, named as such after the Persian Empire (today named Iran).
However, from around the 1960s, many Arab countries began to refer to it as the Arabian Gulf due to a combination of factors, including rivarly between Arabs and Persians along with the growth of Arab nationalism.
The topic is still fiercely debated: back in 2012, Google faced legal action from Iran when the body of water was not labelled as the Persian Gulf on Google Maps.
North Macedonia
Another example of a naming dispute is that which occurred in North Macedonia. Back in 1991, Yugoslavia dissolved and the then-named Macedonia achieved independence. Ultimately, recognition was delayed as Greece objected the country’s name for several reasons, including that it implied the country had aspirations to claim the territory in Greece of the same name.
Following a 27-year dispute with Greece, back in 2019, Macedonia agreed to change its name to the Republic of North Macedonia.
However, tensions flared last year when North Macedonia’s president Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova referred to the country as ‘Macedonia’.
Sea of Japan versus East Sea
The naming of the sea between Korea and Japan has been a hotly-contested topic for decades.
Since 1997, South Korea has advocated that ‘East Sea’ is used to describe the body of water. South Korea’s argument is due to the fact that the name ‘Sea of Japan’ was established and popularised when the country colonised the Korean Peninsula, and therefore, the name should be abolished to remove reference to an imperialistic past.
Japan continues to oppose this argument and refers to the stretch of water as the Sea of Japan, saying that the name was established long before the Korean Peninsula was colonised.
Weighing in on the debate has been the International Hydrographic Organisation, which in 2020 reached an agreement on a proposal to identify seas with numbers instead of names, in a means to potentially resolve such naming disputes.
