Detail of 1681 French map of North America and parts of South America
14 February 2025
The Gulf of Mexico is the body of water bordered by the United States to the north, Mexico to the west and south, and Cuba to the east. The English name is a calque of the Spanish Golfo de México, which dates to the sixteenth century. The name follows the typical pattern of European colonial powers naming bodies of water after the colony on the other side: the Irish Sea was named by the English because that was the route to its colony; the Indian Ocean is so named because the ships of colonial powers traversed it on the way to and from India.
The Spanish name appears in English discourse as early as 1598 in a translation of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Itinerario, a description of the Dutch spy and merchant’s travels to Goa, including second-hand descriptions of places he never visited himself, such as the Americas:
The Island whereof we haue alreadie spoken [i.e. Cuba], which doth almost inclose the sea that runneth betweene Florida and Iucatan, which sea by some men is called Golfo de Mexico, of others Golfo de Florida, and of some others Cortes: the sea that runneth into this gulfe, entreth betwéene Iucatan and Cuba with a mightie streame, and runneth out againe betweene Florida and Cuba, and hath no other course.
The anonymous translator of that work did not render Golfo de Mexico into English, but that would happen within half a century. The calque appears in William Castell’s 1644 A Short Discoverie of the Coasts and Continent of America. This passage is from a description of Panama:
The Bishoprick of Tlascula is next to Guaxaca more to the North-west, though extended also through the whole continent from sea to sea, no lesse then 100. leagues in length, in bredth to the South-sea but 18. where we read of no Haven of note but to the North-sea, here called the gulfe of Mexico, being full 80 leagues.
Another early English use is found in the 1655 America: or an Exact Description of the West-Indies, in a passage that describes Mexico or the Aztec Empire:
The bounds of this Kingdome at present are thus. On the East it hath a large Arm of the Sea, which they call the Bay of New-Spain, or the Gulf of Mexico.
In January 2025, US President Donald Trump, in a move that is best described as childish, directed the Board of Geographic Names to rename the gulf the Gulf of America. The BGN, which answers to the secretary of the interior, is charged with standardizing toponyms in US government usage. It has no authority over private companies and people, much less non-US entities, although US cartographers and publishers often adopt the BGN nomenclature in their style guides. While the US government and some private publishers will adopt the renaming, the name Gulf of Mexico will undoubtedly continue to be the commonly used nomenclature, as top-down directives regarding language almost invariably fail.
Correction (14 February 2025):
Trump’s executive order technically does not rename the entire gulf. It only renames:
the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico
What exactly is meant by the “seaward boundary” is unclear, perhaps referring to the United States’s exclusive economic zone (which governs mining and fishing rights), which apply the new name to about half of the Gulf of Mexico. So any US government, or other, maps that label the entire gulf as the Gulf of America would not comport with this order. As usual, the policy is half baked and sloppily formulated.
Sources:
Castell, William. A Short Discoverie of the Coasts and Continent of America. London: 1644, 45. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Executive Order: Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness, 20 January 2025.
Frum, David. “The ‘Gulf of America’ Is an Admission of Defeat.” Atlantic, 13 February 2025.
Linschoten, Jan Huygen van. Iohn Hvighen van Linschoten. His Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies. London: Iohn Wolfe, 1598, 226/2. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
N. N. America: or an Exact Description of the West-Indies. London: Richard Hodgkinsonne for Edeard Dod, 1655, 332. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Image credit: Attributed to Claude Bernau, 1681. Library of Congress. Public domain image.