What’s in a Name? Mount McKinley and Gulf of America, Explained

In 2015, former U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled the official new—or more accurately, old—name for North America’s tallest peak: Denali. He announced the switch ahead of a trip to Alaska dedicated to underscoring the urgency of climate action as the icy state faces warming temperatures twice as fast as the rest of the country. 

Last week, nearly a decade later, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to revert the peak back to its former title of Mount McKinley, named after the 25th U.S. president (who never actually visited the mountain). The decision has sparked backlash from Alaskan lawmakers and citizens, many of whom fought for years to secure the mountain name Denali, which translates to “the High One” in the Alaskan native language of Koyukon. 

Meanwhile, in the same order, Trump declared the Gulf of Mexico—the warm waters bordered by several U.S. states and two other countries—would now be deemed the Gulf of America. While symbolic in many senses, these name switchups could have complex cultural, international and even logistical implications, experts say. 

Denying Denali: The McKinley-Denali naming controversy stretches back well before the national park surrounding this peak was first established in 1917. Native Alaskan groups each had their own moniker for the mountain, including Denali. 

But in 1897, a gold prospector and admirer of William McKinley—a president-elect at the time—dubbed the mountain “Mount McKinley” in an article published by The New York Sun newspaper, according to the National Park Service. When the president was assassinated in 1901, the name started to stick.  

In 1975, the state of Alaska petitioned the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to officially change the name of the mountain to Denali, a fight that lasted for decades until Obama’s announcement. 

But with Trump’s recent decision, U.S. maps will soon be updated to reflect Mount McKinley. While the broader area will retain the name Denali National Park and Preserve, the order states that McKinley “should be honored for his steadfast commitment to American greatness,” pointing to the former president’s efforts to enact tariffs to protect U.S. manufacturing and boost domestic production. While lawmakers in Ohio—McKinley’s birthplace—praised the move, many people across Alaska spoke out against the name change, including the state’s Republican U.S. senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan. 

“You can’t improve upon the name that Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans bestowed on North America’s tallest peak, Denali – the Great One,” Murkowski said in a statement. “For years, I advocated in Congress to restore the rightful name for this majestic mountain to respect Alaska’s first people who have lived on these lands for thousands of years. This is an issue that should not be relitigated.”  

Polling done by Alaska Survey Research earlier in January found that only a quarter of the 1,816 adult Alaskan residents surveyed supported the name change. Prominent climbers and mountain guides told Outside Magazine they would continue calling the peak Mount Denali either way. 

“The name Denali reflects a local cultural heritage here that predates the United States,” Mark Westman, an Alaska resident and former ranger on the mountain, told Outside. “The name McKinley was an arbitrary name given for someone who had never even set foot here.” 

Gulf of Where? In the same name-swapping order, designed to take effect by mid-February, Trump declared that the Gulf of Mexico will now be known as the Gulf of America “in recognition of this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation’s economy and its people.”

But this name change is limited in scope, given that much of the gulf is located in international waters or under the jurisdiction of other countries, experts say. 

“For us and for the whole world, it is still the Gulf of Mexico,” President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said at a press conference last week. She’s also joked that North America should be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America,” The Associated Press reports. 

The move has garnered annoyance and confusion from the international community, The New York Times reports. Changing the widely known name of this body of water could also muddle disaster communications during weather emergencies in the region, which is known for its intense hurricanes, according to Carson MacPherson-Krutsky, a research associate at the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“We know from risk communication research that this inconsistency in communicating can create a lot of confusion,” she told me. “Changing [geographic names] for political reasons without having … people agree on it can be, I think, very confusing, and just doesn’t promote easy-to-understand messages.” 

Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, told me over email that he thinks people will adjust quickly given the “ubiquity of maps in extreme weather communication.” But he stressed that we won’t know until official forecasts adopt the name and that in the short-term, it could be “confusing to many people who don’t follow political news (many Americans).” 

The new name is already gaining traction on some major platforms. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis referred to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” in a state executive order earlier in January warning residents about the winter weather that hit parts of Florida. Google announced it will update its maps to reflect the Gulf of America—for U.S. users, at least. 

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