Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) urged Apple to officially change the name of the Gulf of Mexico on its mapping platform following President Trump’s Monday executive order declaring the land mass the Gulf of America.
“Hey @tim_cook, just noticed Apple Maps still calls it the Gulf of Mexico. Sent a report through the app, but thought you’d want to know,” Crenshaw wrote in a Tuesday post on X tagging the company’s CEO.
The former president’s move comes days after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced a measure in the House to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”
A similar bill was authored by Democratic state Rep. Stephen Holland (Miss.) in 2012 in a satirical effort directed at Republican lawmakers, according to NPR.
The legislation was eventually referred to a committee but did not pass.
Unlike Holland, Trump would not need a legislature’s approval to rename the body of water. But he would need some help from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.
It’s unclear if an executive order would trump the board’s traditional processes which requires input from impacted municipalities.
“Upon receipt of a proposal to change the name of a natural feature, or that of an unincorporated populated place, canal, channel, or reservoir, all interested parties will be asked to comment,” the board stated on its website.
Trump may also have to request a formal change with the International Hydrographic Organization — of which both the United States and Mexico are members, according to the Associated Press.
The agency works to ensure all the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted uniformly, and also names some of them.
However, there are instances where countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names in their own documentation, as reported by the AP.
Digital mapping systems are outlined through company standards which include ground surveys among various other sources. Apple and Google Maps did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on whether they would work toward renaming the ocean basin.
Cook, Apple’s CEO, spent much of the inauguration day with Trump on Tuesday.
He attended a morning church service at St. John’s, followed by the formal inauguration ceremony inside the Capitol Rotunda and traditional luncheon among other events.
A number of other tech industry leaders, including Trump ally Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Jeff Bezos of Amazon, were also in attendance at Tuesday’s inauguration.
