Google Maps Will Rename Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America in US | Hacker News Reader

Google Maps Will Rename Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America in US

theguardian.com

27 pointshackernj30 comments

I don't like the (global) trend of renaming things every time governments change. It is lazy tokenism in my opinion.

Google does this for a lot of places, for example Kashmir. In India the law mandates that any non-historical map must show all of Kashmir as part of India. Similar law for Pakistan. So Google Maps shows Kashmir as part of India if you are in India and Pakistan if you are in Pakistan.

The Google policy of using official government policy for naming places is reasonable exactly so they don't have to fight an internal civil war over every (dumb) move like this.

"Don't Be Evil" was also once a Google policy.

The name change is stupid, but not sure how it could qualify as evil.

If Trump renamed it to like "The Gulf of Hitler Did Nothing Wrong" then sure, pick a fight. "Gulf of America" is a nothingburger.

This is exactly right. I'm not sure who should get to decide what the name of the gulf should be, but it shouldn't be Google.

Eagerly awaiting the moment this gets renamed to "Gulf between promises on inflation and reality". Maybe plan it as an April's fools joke from the Gmaps' crew? ;-D

Quislings.

Thanks! I learned a new word!

Google Maps in the US Will Change to Gulf of America and Mount McKinley (theverge.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42849935 43 points | 7 hours ago | 64 comments

I don’t see why people are so upset about this. Mexico is in the continent of North America. if they were trying to rename it to “Gulf of the United States” or something then that would be less reasonable.

Because it’s weird and stupid and random.

That’s basically what they did. It’s obvious that “America” here means USA, not the continent.

I'm sure the United Statesians didn't mean that.

Just because the new name may be geographically accurate doesn't mean it was a good idea to change it.

The change was clearly for propaganda reasons, and that is what makes people upset

America is an extremely common synonym for the USA, for better or worse. It's not convincing to imply that you believe a president of the USA, renowned for his nationalist rhetoric and pettiness, renamed a geographic feature bordering Mexico and the USA from "The X of Mexico" to "The X of America" not as a reference to the USA.

Regardless, it's antagonistic to the namesake for no good reason, no matter what the new name is.

So, we will see "America Mexicana" in Google Maps?

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42847758

This is pretty annoying - almost as bad as trying to rename Turkey to whatever non-ASCII atrocity they came up with.

This is a great example of how right people are to have a low opinion of news organizations over the rage- and clickbait that even ostensibly respectable ones are willing to traffic in for engagement. The entire basis for this article seems to be these four statements that Google posted on Twitter:

> We’ve received a few questions about naming within Google Maps. We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.

> For geographic features in the U.S., this is when Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated. <https://www.usgs.gov/tools/geographic-names-information-syst...>

> When that happens, we will update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America.

> Also longstanding practice: When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.

<https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1884012692048166951.html>

(Side note: you know how I know this? Not because the esteemed folks behind this piece linked to their sources, as would be reasonable, given the affordances of the medium. I had to take the fragments mentioned in the article and track it down myself.)

Please:

1. Flag this article

2. Stop rewarding the professional writers, editors, and news organizations and other shameless sacks of shit who turn out/receive outrage pieces like this and say, "Yeah, we're fine with this"

3. Stop submitting this kind of dogshit here

Who is the designated naming authority

Waiting for someone to pull an Astana[1] and a rename of Washington to Trump.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astana#Names

Freedom fries for maps. Very idiotic.

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