President Donald Trump just said during his inauguration that he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Aside from the political aspects, how does that even work? How does OSM choose a source for that? I’m curious!
Also, somebody executed what I thought while I wrote this post:
Hint: name:en was already changed:
This seems very premature. Just because the US president states that he wants rename an entire international gulf, doesn’t mean that it will happen, nevermind become the common usage.
There are alt_name and language tags that could be used, that said, nothing is official and a source should be provided from an authoritative source once it’s actually declared not just pontificated during an address.
The name of the water body as recognized by the United States is set by the US Board of Geographic names (https://www.usgs.gov/us-board-on-geographic-names/domestic-names). That entity meets occasionally and releases data that is displayed by the National Map. Here’s a link to their entry for Gulf of Mexico: Geographic Names Information System.
Even if the name changes there, I would argue that OSM would specify it as an alt_name, not name:en or even name:en_us, since the majority of use in English or American English is still “Gulf of Mexico”.
I don’t think all English speakers want to use the new American name right away. It should be reverted.
Maybe it should be better name:trump=Gulf of America 
How does the USA decide what’s the name international waters?
Each country decides what to call a thing, even if it’s in international waters. Most countries agree with one another on what to call most things, but there are some exceptions. If the US government bureaucracy ends up changing its recognized name through this process, then it’ll add one more disputed name and make life a little bit more difficult for the world’s cartographers and map makers.
Wouldn’t it be just official_name:en_US once its signed and stay that way until it starts to be commonly used? Since alt_name still relies on common usages.
edit: Forgot to add _US to the tag
exactly, the current state reflects this, thanks to @Ian Dees , so that the mocked name is now stored in the alt_name:en_us tag.
Maybe it could also be alt_name:en-US, but generally the direction seems quite appropriate.
This should also apply to:
Also mentioned in the inaugural address.
National Public Radio (NPR) post on renaming:
For posterity, the BGN record for the Denali “summit” is Geographic Names Information System. There’s some further discussion of how the name change happened in there.
The USGS will be subject to the executive order that is (or is said to be planned on) signed today. The US will officially refer to the body as the Gulf of America. It isn’t the alternative name, it is the name used by America. The US doesn’t dictate all English speaking countries to use the name, so any \*:en tag isn’t quite right. And anything that uses name:en_us or the like isn’t likely to be displayed to American viewers of the map (at least in the standard carto). Like Ian said, this will “make life a little bit more difficult for […] cartographers”.
this sounds as if official_name:en-US could be the correct tag then, as soon as it is actually officially approved and valid.
Great to read important issues are dealt with priority.
changeset:
In any case, the path you have chosen is not the one that corresponds to the customs of this community.
Well, in preparedness, learned today that the better-osm-org OSM website extension has an edit war detector function ;p)
The name change of that body of water should be handled thru the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, who conveniently “will convene its 2025 session from 28 April to the 2 May 2025 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York”. Timing is everything, but I doubt the proximity and timing are going to get an automatic change approved.
Official according to whom? The US doesn’t exercise sovereignty over the entire gulf, nor is it the only English-speaking country capable of recognising this-or-that name as ‘official’.
Quoting the wiki:
official_name=* – the official name of the feature, or the name as used by governments and other official organizations. Usually tagged when object has unwieldy and typically not used name that was officially assigned.
Tagging this with official_name:en-US indicates that according to the US government that is the english name of this object
It’s ironic that Mexico doesn’t have a national names authority. 