Executive Order 14172
Executive Order 14172, titled "Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness", is an executive order signed by Donald Trump, the 47th president of the United States, on January 20, 2025, the day of his second inauguration.
The executive order directs U.S. federal agencies to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America" and Denali, the highest mountain in North America, as "Mount McKinley". The order further outlines the process for updating the United States Board on Geographic Names.
The executive order is not binding on U.S. state governments and the private sector, although several major online map platforms, U.S.-based media outlets, and Republican-led state governments voluntarily moved to adopt the names outlined in the order. Many governments internationally, including Mexico, continue to use "Gulf of Mexico" rather than the new name.
Background
The BGN is authorized to standardize geographical endonyms and exonyms within the U.S. federal government. Within the BGN, the Foreign Names Committee is responsible for maintaining the names of international waters such as the Gulf. Ordinarily, the BGN does not perform geographical renaming but rather recognizes existing names to align federal usage with local usage, eliminate offensive names, or combine duplicate records.Publishers have established editorial policies on the selection and presentation of disputed geographical names. The stated policy of National Geographic Maps is to aim for political neutrality, annotating disputes with explanatory notes. In 2008, Google published a "primary local usage" policy for Google Maps and Google Earth, stating a preference for "names which are in widespread daily use, rather than giving immediate recognition to any arbitrary governmental re-naming", giving the Pacific Ocean as a hypothetical example. In practice, Google Maps omits some official designations, for example varying the label of the South China Sea but not labeling the West Philippine Sea as designated by the Philippine Maritime Zones Act.
Denali–Mount McKinley naming dispute
Located in Alaska, Denali is the tallest mountain in North America. For centuries, Alaska Natives have called it Denali, meaning "the high one" in the Koyukon language. Their descriptive name for the mountain contrasts with European settlers' practice of naming mountains after individuals. In 1917, the U.S. federal government named it Mount McKinley, in honor of President William McKinley, with the establishment of Mount McKinley National Park. The Alaska state government later designated it Denali, and the park was renamed Denali National Park and Preserve in 1980. In August 2015, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that mountain's name would officially be changed to Denali in all federal documents. President Barack Obama announced the renaming while on a visit to Alaska in early September 2015. The Obama administration's action was criticized by the entire congressional delegation from President McKinley's home state of Ohio, as well as then presidential candidate Donald Trump, who pledged to change the federal designation back.In December 2024, President-elect Donald Trump stated at AmericaFest that he planned to revert the mountain's official federal name to Mount McKinley during his second term. Trump's proposal was met with criticism from many prominent Alaskans. Early the next month, a poll by Alaska Survey Research found that, among 1,816 adult Alaska residents, 54% opposed renaming Denali to Mount McKinley, 26% supported it, and 20% had no opinion on the matter, with a margin of error of 2.3%. The poll found a partisan split, with those who had voted for Trump favoring Mount McKinley by 43% to 37% and those who had voted for then–Vice President Kamala Harris favoring Denali by 86% to 7%.
Gulf of Mexico as "Gulf of America"
For centuries, the Gulf of Mexico has been recognized by that name, which is derived from Mexica, the Nahuatl name for the Aztecs. The name began to be used on early European maps in 1550 and soon became established in international cartography and legal usage by bodies such as the International Hydrographic Organization.The idea of renaming the gulf to "Gulf of America" arose much later. As chair of the BGN in the 2000s, librarian John R. Hébert received repeated petitions to this effect from one individual. In 2010, comedian Stephen Colbert humorously suggested creating a "Gulf of America fund" to help in the cleanup following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In 2012, Mississippi state representative Steve Holland, a Democrat, introduced a bill proposing the name change satirically. In an interview with NPR at the time, he explained that as the Mississippi Republican Party appeared to want to push anything Mexican out of the state, renaming the body of water would help with that cause.
In early January 2025, president-elect Trump made public statements about renaming the waters as the "Gulf of America". Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia responded by introducing House Resolution 276 to rename the gulf. At a press briefing, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico mocked the idea by suggesting that North America be renamed to "Mexican America", citing the 1814 Constitution of Apatzingán and Pieter van den Keere's Orbis terrarum typus de integro multis in locis emendatus. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll of 2,650 U.S. registered voters found that 28% of respondents supported adopting the name "Gulf of America" while 72% opposed changing the name.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the name "Gulf of America" referred to Nakhodka Bay in the Russian Far East, commemorating the Russian corvette America. The name was replaced by an ostensibly less Western one as part of a broader renaming of geographical objects in the Russian Far East.
Provisions
Agency heads are directed to review and potentially replace their appointees to the BGN. The secretary of the interior is tasked with reviewing and making additional appointments to help implement the order. The BGN is instructed to advance the policy of honoring "American heroes" in its naming and renaming decisions.The order directs the secretary of the interior to reinstate the name "Mount McKinley" within 30 days, reversing the 2015 decision to rename it Denali. The surrounding national park area will retain the name Denali National Park and Preserve. The Secretary will also work with Alaska Native groups and local organizations to identify other landmark names that honor Alaskan history and culture.
Citing the Gulf of Mexico's importance to the U.S. economy and global commerce, the order directs the Secretary of the Interior to rename it to "Gulf of America" within 30 days, updating the Geographic Names Information System and ensuring that all federal documents reflect the new name. The order defines the affected body of water as the "U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States 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". The original draft of the order focused on renaming Denali; after President Trump's statements regarding the gulf in January 2025, the provision renaming the gulf was hastily added to the draft.
The Secretary of the Interior is encouraged to seek public and intergovernmental input regarding other figures or landmarks that could be honored, particularly in light of America's upcoming 250th anniversary.
The order clarifies that it does not alter the authority of any executive department or agency, nor does it create new legal rights. It must be implemented in accordance with applicable law and the availability of appropriations.
Legal authority
The executive order cites, which tasks the BGN with promoting uniformity in geographic nomenclature within the federal government. Former interior secretary Sally Jewell, whose order designating the mountain as Denali was rescinded, stated that she did not believe that Trump had direct authority to rename the mountain back to Mount McKinley, since it was under the authority of the BGN. The executive order does not compel the use of "Mount McKinley" and "Gulf of America" by non-federal agencies, private companies, or foreign entities.President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico argues that the U.S. government only has the legal authority to rename the U.S. territorial sea within the gulf, up to from the coast, based on the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. However, the U.S. has never ratified the convention despite recognizing some of its provisions.
A 1989 bilateral agreement with Canada requires the BGN to coordinate the name of any shared geographic feature with the Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographic Names. However, no bilateral agreement requires coordination with Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography or Cuba's National Commission on Geographical Names. The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names has adopted a resolution that, when a dispute arises between countries that share a geographical feature, UN agencies will accept the names used by each party to the dispute, which may result in maps labeling each name simultaneously.
Implementation
On January 24, 2025, the Department of the Interior announced that the names Mount McKinley and "Gulf of America" were effective immediately for federal use, and that the BGN was working to update the Geographic Names Information System to reflect the order. In early February, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued Secretary's Orders 3423 and 3424, directing the BGN to update GNIS with "Gulf of America" and "Mount McKinley", respectively. The BGN rejected several proposals to revert Mount McKinley back to Denali, because overriding an executive order would require Congressional intervention.On February 9, 2025, President Trump signed a proclamation designating the day as "Gulf of America Day" while flying over the Gulf of Mexico on Air Force One from Palm Beach, Florida, to New Orleans to attend Super Bowl LIX. The United States Geological Survey timed an update to GNIS and The National Map to coincide with the proclamation, retroactive to January 20. Following the update, both GNIS and its counterpart for exonyms, the GEOnet Names Server, give "Gulf of America" as the conventional name, relegating "Gulf of Mexico" to a variant name alongside Spanish names.
Initially, the order's description of the gulf created uncertainty among mapmakers about the extent to which the gulf would be renamed. President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico maintains that the order only directed the secretary of the interior to rename the portion on the U.S. continental shelf, and that the legal authority to rename the gulf is limited to U.S. territorial waters. However, Secretary Burgum subsequently ordered the renaming of "the feature currently known as the Gulf of Mexico", and the modified records in both GNIS and GNS explicitly refer to the gulf as a whole, without distinguishing territorial waters or the continental shelf.
Agencies across the federal government moved to align their usage with GNIS. The Environmental Protection Agency renamed one of its water quality programs, the Gulf of Mexico Division, to the Gulf of America Division. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a charting notice that the agency's databases and aeronautical charts would be updated to say "Gulf of America" and "Mount McKinley". The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began updating forecasts and maps to refer to "Gulf of America", though it was unclear how the National Hurricane Center would refer to forecasts outside of the U.S. exclusive economic zone. The Library of Congress issued a proposal to replace scores of existing references to "Gulf of Mexico" and "Denali" in the Library of Congress Subject Headings, a controlled vocabulary used in library science.