Mexico asked Google Maps to rename Mexico’s Gulf
Mexican President Claudia Shinbam has written a letter to Google, asking the firm to rethink its decision to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order, which requires a water body – which is limited by the US, Cuba and Mexico – was named the US Gulf in its first week in the office.
But this will only appear with a new name for people located in the US on Google Map – somewhere else in the world it will maintain its current name, which has been used for hundreds of years.
No international organization is responsible for naming water bodies.
But Mexico argues that the US cannot legally change the name of the Gulf because the United Nations Conference on the law of the sea decides that the sovereign region of an individual country extends only to 12 miles from the beach.
“(Name change) can only correspond to 12 knots from the beaches of the United States,” Shinbam said.
Google has not yet responded to the BBC request for comments.
But a statement on social media on Monday said: “We have a long practice of implementing the name change when we updated to official government sources.”
This will change the name of Mount Denley as Mount McKinley in the US after another order from Trump.
“When the official names vary between countries, maps users look at their official local name,” said this.
Shinbam has criticized Google’s decision, saying that the firm should not respond to the “mandate of a country” to change the name of “an international sea”.
But she used to make fun of Trump’s move with fun of Mexico, which Google had demanded to take some additional naming decisions.
“By the way, we are also going to ask Mexican America to appear on the map,” he said.
Shinbaum first jokingly said that it would consider nominating North America as “Amrika Mexicana” in the country.
“He says he would call it the Gulf of America on his continental shelf,” Shinbam earlier said that when Trump signed an executive order.
“For us it is still the Gulf of Mexico, and for the whole world it is still the Gulf of Mexico.”
