Position names are extra than simply labels on a map. They affect how other folks be informed in regards to the international round them and understand their position in it.
Names can ship messages and counsel what’s and isn’t valued in society. And the best way that they’re modified over the years can sign cultural shifts.
The USA is in the course of a place-renaming second. From the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of The usa, to the go back of Forts Bragg and Benning and the newly re-renamed Mount McKinley in Alaska’s Denali Nationwide Park, we’re witnessing a consequential shift within the politics of position naming.
This unexpected rewriting of the country’s map – accomplished to “restore American greatness,” consistent with President Donald Trump’s govt order that made a few of them legit – is a part of a reputation sport that acknowledges position names as robust manufacturers and political gear.
In our analysis on position naming, we discover how this “name game” is used to say keep an eye on over shared symbols and embed diffused and not-so-subtle messages within the panorama.
As geography lecturers and researchers, we additionally acknowledge the training and emotional have an effect on the call sport may have at the public.
Position names may have mental results
Renaming a spot is at all times an act of energy.
Other people in energy have lengthy used position naming to assert keep an eye on over the id of where, bolster their reputations, retaliate towards combatants and reach political targets.
Those strikes may have robust mental results, in particular when the call inspires one thing threatening. Converting a spot call can essentially shift how other folks view, relate to or really feel that they belong inside of that position.
In Shenandoah County, Virginia, scholars at two colleges at the start named for Accomplice generals had been on an emotional curler coaster of brand adjustments in recent times. The universities have been renamed Mountain View and Honey Run in 2020 amid the nationwide uproar over the homicide of George Floyd, a Black guy killed via a police officer in Minneapolis.
4 years later, the native college board reinstated the unique Accomplice names after conservatives took keep an eye on of the board.
One Black 8th grader at Mountain View Prime Faculty — now re-renamed Stonewall Jackson Prime Faculty — testified at a board assembly about how the deliberate trade would have an effect on her:
“I would have to represent a man that fought for my ancestors to be slaves. If this board decides to restore the names, I would not feel like I was valued and respected,” she mentioned. The board nonetheless licensed the trade, 5-1.
Even out of doors of faculties, position names function as a “hidden curriculum.” They supply narratives to the general public about how the neighborhood or country sees itself – in addition to whose histories and views it considers necessary or worthy of public consideration.
Position names have an effect on how other folks understand, enjoy and emotionally hook up with their environment in each aware and unconscious techniques. Psychologists, sociologists and geographers have explored how this feeling of position manifests itself into the psyche, developing both attachment or aversion to position, whether or not it’s a faculty, mountain or park.
A story of 2 forts
Renaming puts can rally a pacesetter’s supporters thru rebranding.
Trump’s orders to revive the names Castle Bragg and Castle Benning, each at the start named for Accomplice generals, illustrate this impact. The names have been modified to Castle Liberty and Castle Moore in 2023 after Congress handed a regulation banning the usage of Accomplice names for federal installations.
Veterans and different visitors posed in 2023 subsequent to a newly unveiled signal for Castle Moore, named for Lt. Gen. Harold ‘Hal’ Moore, who served in Vietnam, and his spouse, Julia Moore. In 2025, President Donald Trump reverted the call again to Castle Benning.
Cheney Orr/AFP by means of Getty Pictures
Trump made a marketing campaign promise to his fans to “bring back the name” of Castle Bragg if reelected.
To get across the federal ban, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth recognized two unrelated adorned Military veterans with the similar final names — Bragg and Benning — however with none Accomplice connections, to honor as a substitute.
Name it a sleight of hand or a stroke of genius in the event you’d like, this tactic allowed the Division of Protection to restore politically charged names with out violating the regulation.
A soldier walks beside an indication that was once unveiled when Castle Liberty was once rededicated as Castle Bragg all through a rite on base on March 7, 2025.
AP Picture/Chris Seward
The recovery of the names Bragg and Benning would possibly really feel like a symbolic homecoming for many who resisted the unique call trade or have emotional ties to the names thru their recollections of residing and serving at the base, moderately than a connection to the particular namesakes.
On the other hand, the names are nonetheless reminders of the army bases’ unique affiliation with defenders of slavery.
Where-renaming sport
A wave of place-name adjustments all through the Obama and Biden administrations desirous about getting rid of offensive or derogatory position names and spotting Indigenous names.
For instance, Clingmans Dome, the best possible top within the Nice Smoky Mountains, was once renamed to Kuwohi in September 2024, transferring the call from a Accomplice basic to a Cherokee phrase which means “the mulberry place.”
Below the Trump management, on the other hand, place-name adjustments are being complicated explicitly to chase away towards reform efforts, a part of a broader attack on what Trump calls “woke culture.”
The view from a lookout tower on Kuwohi, previously referred to as Clingmans Dome, within the Nice Smoky Mountains.
Nationwide Park Carrier
President Barack Obama modified Alaska’s Mount McKinley to Denali in 2015 to recognize Indigenous heritage and a long-standing call for the mountain. Officers in Alaska had asked the call trade to Denali years previous and supported the call trade in 2015.
Trump, on his first day in place of business in January 2025, moved to rename Denali again to Mount McKinley, over the opposition of Republican politicians in Alaska. The state Legislature handed a answer a couple of days later asking Trump to rethink.
Georgia Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter made a contemporary legislative proposal to rename Greenland as “Red, White, and Blueland” in strengthen of Trump’s expansionist need to buy the island, which is an self reliant territory of Denmark.
Danish officers and Greenlanders noticed Carter’s absurd proposal as insulting and destructive to diplomatic family members. It isn’t the primary time that position renaming has been used as a type of symbolic insult in world family members.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of The usa would possibly have to begin with appeared implausible, however it’s already mirrored in commonplace navigation apps.
Google Maps shows the call ‘Gulf of America’ as a substitute of Gulf of Mexico in March 2025.
Google INEGI
A greater method to make a choice position names
When leaders rename a spot in an abrupt, unilateral style — continuously for ideological causes — they possibility alienating communities that deeply hook up with the ones names as a type of reminiscence, id and position attachment.
A greater selection, in our view, could be to make renaming shared landscapes participatory, with alternatives for significant public involvement within the renaming procedure.
This method does now not keep away from call adjustments, but it surely suggests the adjustments must reply to the social and mental wishes of communities and the evolving cultural id of puts — and now not merely be used to attain political issues.
As a substitute, encouraging public participation — corresponding to thru panorama have an effect on checks and important audits that take the wishes of affected communities severely — can domesticate a way of shared possession within the choice that can provide the ones names extra endurance.
The most recent position renamings are already affecting the school room enjoy. Scholars aren’t simply memorizing new position labels, however they’re additionally being requested to reevaluate the which means of the ones puts and their very own dating with the country and the arena.
As historical past has proven all over the world, one of the most main downsides of leaders implementing call adjustments is that the names may also be simply changed once the following regime takes energy. The outcome is usually a endless call sport.
