Google Maps switched the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America after President Donald Trump ordered the name change, and Apple did the same shortly thereafter.
Apple began making the change Tuesday for U.S. customers. It will roll out the new nomenclature to Apple Maps users globally in the near future, according to a report.
Apple Maps now lists Gulf of America
Trump ordered the name change on January 20 as one of the first acts of his second term as president. He commanded the Secretary of the Interior to “take all appropriate actions to rename as the ‘Gulf of America’ the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the State of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico.”
For obvious reasons, the change was expected to appear initially in digital form rather than on printed maps. Google signaled it likely would be first to adopt the new name when it said in late January, “We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”
Google followed through — the Google Maps application for Android and iPhone both showed the new name on Tuesday. But it only appears that way for users in the United States. For the rest of the world, the name remains the Gulf of Mexico, as it has been since the year 1550.
Apple Maps began displaying the body of water for U.S. users who searched for “Gulf of America” on Tuesday. As of Wednesday morning, the body of water has the new label on maps. It remains unclear how long until the change appears for all users.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
