Just a few hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order instructing federal officials to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” Florida has already started implementing the change.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, issued an order ahead of a rare winter storm system in which his office stated, “An area of low pressure moving across the Gulf of America, interacting with Arctic air, will bring widespread impactful winter weather to North Florida…”
President Trump first talked about renaming the gulf in a press conference earlier in the month.
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"Because we do most of the work there, and it's ours...we're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Gulf of America," he said on Jan. 7. "What a beautiful name. And it's appropriate."
The large body of water enveloping approximately 1,631 miles of the United States southeastern coastline is critical to the American economy.
The gulf shares nearly an equal amount of its borders with Mexico.
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It’s been named the Gulf of Mexico for over four centuries, but the name actually refers to a city named Mexico from Spanish colonization, a professor at Florida Atlantic University explained.
Even if President Trump’s executive order is unchallenged and federal officials succeed in renaming the body of water, the rest of the world doesn’t have to refer to it by the new name.
After President Trump first spoke about the name change, Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum sarcastically proposed her own name change in reference to North America. She said, “Why don't we call it "América Mexicana"? That sounds nice, no.”
