Dubbed the Gulf of New Spain by the conquistadors, the vast body of water that borders Texas and four other U.S. states has been given numerous names by locals and early explorers including the North Sea and the Seno Mexicano, according to John S. Sledge, an Alabama author and historian who wrote a book about the Gulf’s storied history. But some four to five centuries ago, mapmakers began to use the name we know today: Gulf of Mexico or Golfo de México—drawn, like the country’s name, from the Indigenous Nahuatl language.
Now by presidential decree, Donald Trump has ordered it to be rebranded as “the Gulf of America.” In Trump’s long list of executive orders, this oddity came as something of a surprise, prompting some Gulf Coast residents to pose questions like: Can he do this? And if so, will it cause chaos? The answer is both yes and no, Sledge and others said.
