In the US, the maintaining authority on references for geographic features is the Bureau of Geographic Names. It’s a federal agency operating under the secretary of the interior - and unfortunately, the president does have the unilateral authority direct them to change official names (in theory he can’t change it for internal political reasons - declaring something the “Barack Obama memorial dick-shaped rock” or whatever - but I don’t know if that has ever been ruled on)
There’s a public process the agency is required to go through for changing names of places. Trump bypassed that and had the USGS update the GNIS with the name change through an Executive Order and not through the BGN. When called out on it they tried to get it through Congress, but the Senate didn’t approve the name change.
It isn’t the Gulf of America.
The board actually did vote on the name in 2006, but rejected it.
In the US, the maintaining authority on references for geographic features is the Bureau of Geographic Names. It’s a federal agency operating under the secretary of the interior - and unfortunately, the president does have the unilateral authority direct them to change official names (in theory he can’t change it for internal political reasons - declaring something the “Barack Obama memorial dick-shaped rock” or whatever - but I don’t know if that has ever been ruled on)
There’s a public process the agency is required to go through for changing names of places. Trump bypassed that and had the USGS update the GNIS with the name change through an Executive Order and not through the BGN. When called out on it they tried to get it through Congress, but the Senate didn’t approve the name change.
It isn’t the Gulf of America.
The board actually did vote on the name in 2006, but rejected it.
It is currently listed in the GNIS as “Gulf of America” (you can confirm this here)
Yes. But it wasn’t changed through the legal public process, so the GNIS is not accurate.