Gulf of Mexico vs. Gulf of America: How digital maps display disputed names

After U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America in January, some digital maps quickly made the change, at least for American users. 

“People using Maps in the U.S. will see ‘Gulf of America,’ and people in Mexico will see ‘Gulf of Mexico.’ Everyone else will see both names,” Google said in a blog post.

It wasn’t the first time that mapping companies have had to update a name. Around the world, many places have had multiple names at different times due to historical reasons or territorial disputes. Governments often pressure map companies, airlines, media outlets, and even streaming firms to adopt their preferred names.

Seas can be particularly tricky, as countries bordering one body of water often have different names for it. Here’s a look at how some of the leading mapping services globally display the disputed names of such seas. While Google Maps and Apple’s Maps are used across the world, Here WeGo is particularly popular in Europe. Baidu Maps is widely used in China, and Naver Map is the go-to map app in South Korea. 

The user’s location determines how a digital map is labeled. Google Maps users in the U.S. see Gulf of America.

Google Maps users outside the U.S. and Mexico see both labels.

Google Maps users in Mexico still see Gulf of Mexico.

Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America 

President Trump ordered the Gulf of Mexico to be called the Gulf of America shortly after taking office in January. The name Gulf of Mexico has been in use for centuries. After Google renamed the body of water the Gulf of America for U.S.-based users, the Mexico government threatened to sue the company for applying the change onto Mexican territories. 

Persian Gulf or Arabian Gulf

The Persian Gulf has been used throughout history to describe the body of water separating Iran and seven other Gulf states. In the 1960s, Arab countries began promoting the name Arabian Gulf under a pan-Arab nationalism push. Iran still defends the Persian name. In 2012, it threatened to sue Google for not showing a name for the Gulf, after earlier warning airlines using the term Arabian Gulf on in-flight monitors that they would be barred from Iranian airspace.

Apple maps shows Persian Gulf.

Here WeGo maps use the label Arabian Gulf.

Baidu labels the area as Persian Gulf.

South China Sea or West Philippine Sea 

China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei have competing claims over this strategically important waterway in the Pacific Ocean. China issued a map in 1947 detailing its claims over a vast majority of the area with the so-called nine-dash line and calls it the South Sea, while the Philippines calls its own claimed parts the West Philippine Sea. Vietnam refers to it as East Sea. All the individual islands, rocks, and cays also have names in multiple languages. A Google Maps user can see East Sea on their mobile phone, while users outside Vietnam can see South China Sea.

Sea of Japan or East Sea

Japan uses the term Sea of Japan to refer to the body of water separating it from the Korean Peninsula; South Korea calls it the East Sea. In 2024, Netflix acknowledged that it had “mislabeled” the East Sea as the Sea of Japan in the Spanish subtitles for a Korean series. Google Maps shows both Sea of Japan and East Sea, while Baidu has no labels.