Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico should only be the start

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The Atlantic Ocean borders our nation's entire East Coast, so why not change that to 'East American Ocean?' Then we could start calling the Pacific Ocean the 'West American Ocean.'

When I first heard President Trump first mention something about changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, I smiled and shook my head. Is this what we want our leaders working on?

Aren't there bigger problems to spend energy trying to solve?

Plus, on any country's coast only the first 12 miles from shore are considered part of that country. Anything beyond 12 miles is considered international waters.

But the more I thought about it, the more I was seduced by the idea. President Trump can add to his legacy by eliminating the nonsensical and bringing common sense back to our lives. Why stop with the Gulf of Mexico and Mt. McKinley?

I mean, the Atlantic Ocean borders our nation's entire East Coast, so why not change that to 'East American Ocean?' Then we could start calling the Pacific Ocean the 'West American Ocean.'

We asked you, our readers to chime in and (as I expected) the overall sentiment was to leave well enough alone or you didn't care enough one way or the other. Some 60.5 percent of respondents wanted to leave the name as is and 5.1 percent didn't care. That means only 34.3 percent were in favor of the name change to Gulf of America. Here are some of your comments:

John F. Carpener's take: "While in the big scheme of things who cares? We border more of the Gulf than Mexico and we do more of the defense of the Gulf. Not to mention we have major ports that are in the Gulf. So by rights we should have it named the Gulf of America."

Dave Pryce: "The most important reason to oppose this name change is that it is meant as an insult."

David Beyer wrote: "For a new administration that is supposed to be about 'efficiency', why would you create more expense by renaming a perfectly fine body of water? So much for focus on the economy and immigration. He's more interested in petty fights."

Randy Palermo looked at it like this: "Technically it should be called Gulf of America as it borders more of USA than Mexico. It was named Gulf of Mexico in 1600s by the French."

According to an article in an "The Conversation," the Board on Geographic Names could make the change to Gulf of America on official U.S. maps, but basically every country decides what to call places. Wouldn't that make for some interesting conversations while traveling? Imagine asking the snobbiest Parisian if he could direct you to the American Tower instead of the Eiffel Tower?

Yeah, I know it's a structure and not a geographic location but we did bail out the French in not one, but two World Wars. We can say the same about our British cousins. Doesn't "American Bridge" sound better than London Bridge?

Of course, we'd have to be OK with countries following suit. We couldn't get angry if our neighbors north of the border started referring to us as "South Canada" or the United Kingdom referring to us as "Olde England."

Google Maps has already announced it is changing their maps to say Gulf of America. Now, that makes is real.

Now, on to reclaiming the American ... er ... Panama Canal and figuring out what to do with a renamed Greenland? Can we move it to the Gulf of America?

Contact Torres at jtorres@floridatoday.com. You can follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @johnalbertorres or on Facebook at facebook.com/FTjohntorres.

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Source link : https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2025/01/29/trump-rename-gulf-of-mexico-america-atlantic-ocean-greenland/77978594007/ Author : Publish date : 2025-01-28 20:06:00 Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source .

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