Mexico asks Google Maps not to rename the Gulf of Mexico

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum wrote a letter to Google asking the company to reconsider its decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

US President Donald Trump has signed a decree demanding the water body – which is bordered by the United States, Cuba and Mexico – being renamed the American Gulf during his first week in power.

But it will only appear on Google Maps with the new name for people based in the United States – elsewhere in the world, it will keep its current name, which has been used for hundreds of years.

There is no international organization responsible for the name of water bodies.

But Mexico maintains that the United States cannot legally change the name of the Gulf because the United Nations Convention on the Act of the Sea dictates that the sovereign territory of an individual country only extends up to 12 marine kilometers of the coast.

“(The name change) could only correspond to the 12 marine kilometers from the Côtes du United States of America,” said Sheinbaum.

Google has not yet responded to the BBC comment request.

But in a press release on social networks on Monday, he said: “We have a long -standing practice to apply name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”

He will also rename Mount Denali as Mont McKinley in the United States, according to another Trump order.

“When official names vary between countries, cards users see their official local name,” said.

Sheinbaum criticized Google’s decision, saying that the company should not respond to the “mandate of a country” to change the name of “an international sea”.

But she seemed to make fun of the joke of Trump in Mexico can ask Google to make additional renown decisions.

“By the way, we will also ask that Mexican America appear on the map,” she said.

Sheinbaum has already joked by saying that she was planning to rename North America as “American Mexicana” in the country.

“He says he will call him the Gulf of America on his continental plateau,” said Sheinbaum before Trump signed the decree.

“For us, it’s always the Gulf of Mexico, and for the whole world, it’s always the Gulf of Mexico.”