The body of water south of the US is the Gulf of Mexico
Same thing, new accepted name.
TaughtThe large body of water bordered by the United States, Mexico, and Cuba is the Gulf of Mexico, a name it has held on maps for over four centuries.
NowIn 2025, a US executive order renamed it the 'Gulf of America' for federal use, and the US Geographic Names Information System updated the name on 10 February 2025. The change is binding only inside the US government, Mexico and most of the world still call it the Gulf of Mexico, and there is no international authority that can settle it.
What actually happened
The order, signed on 20 January 2025, also renamed North America's highest peak from Denali back to Mount McKinley, reversing a 2015 change, and directed federal agencies and the official US names database to adopt both. Google Maps began showing 'Gulf of America' to users in the United States, the old name to users in Mexico, and both elsewhere, which is a neat illustration of the underlying point.
That point is that place names are not owned by anyone. There is no world body that assigns them; each country decides what appears on its own maps, and cartographers and companies then choose whose usage to follow. The US can rename a feature for its own official purposes, but it cannot compel Mexico, or the Associated Press, or a foreign atlas, to follow, and most did not.
The entry belongs in geography because it corrects a thing taught as simple settled fact, that the gulf 'is called' one thing, by showing that a four-hundred-year-old name can be split in two by a signature, and that what a place is 'called' now depends on which government's map you are reading.
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Sources
- Scientific American: How Trump's Order to Rename Gulf of Mexico and Denali Worksscientificamerican.com
- Federal Register: Gulf of America Renamingfederalregister.gov
Who was taught this
Still standard through 2025, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 2025 learned the earlier version.