"It Is a Fact That the Body of Water … Is Called the Gulf of America"?

Place names in American English are defined by what American English speakers call them, not what the President tells us to call them.

I hope to blog soon about the First Amendment questions raised by President Trump's excluding the AP from the Oval Office and Air Force One because of the AP's refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico "the Gulf of America." (Turns out the precedents on this subject are complicated.) [UPDATE: Just posted that analysis.] But I wanted to start by briefly discussing the underlying language question. Here's an excerpt from Wednesday's White House press briefing:

QUESTION: But isn't it retaliatory in nature, is the argument, because the reason that the AP was barred, which they said was because they're not using the phrase Gulf of America, they're using Gulf of Mexico in line with their standards. And so the question here is, is this setting a precedent that this White House will retaliate against reporters who don't use the language that you guys believe reporters should use?

And how does that align with the First Amendment commitment that you were just talking about?

KAROLINE LEAVITT: I was very upfront in my briefing on day one that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable. And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America. And I'm not sure why news outlets don't want to call it that, but that is what it is. The secretary of Interior has made that the official designation, and the Geographical Identification Names Server and Apple has recognized that, Google has recognized that.

Pretty much every other outlet in this room has recognized that body of water as the Gulf of America. And it's very important to this administration that we get that right, not just for people here at home, but also for the rest of the world. Sure.

Likewise, here's a Tweet from the White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich:

The Associated Press continues to ignore the lawful geographic name change of the Gulf of America. This decision is not just divisive, but it also exposes the Associated Press' commitment to misinformation. While their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited spaces, like the Oval Office and Air Force One. Going forward, that space will now be opened up to the many thousands of reporters who have been barred from covering these intimate areas of the administration. Associate Press journalists and photographers will retain their credentials to the White House complex.

This, it seems to me, just isn't right. The name for a geographical feature is a linguistic and sociological question: In a particular language (or dialect), a thing's name is what speakers of that language call it. Sometimes speakers have different names for the same thing, in which case each is a legitimate name. (Among American speakers of English, for instance, the U.S. can be called "America," "the U.S.," "the States," and more.)

It is not a legal question that can be settled by a "lawful geographic name change," or a scientific question, or a question that can be resolved by the government. Pennsylvania may call itself a Commonwealth, but it's also a state. If the Governor of Pennsylvania insisted that everyone should call it a Commonwealth, we could still continue to call it a state. (As it happens, the U.S. Constitution calls all the states, expressly including Pennsylvania, "states," and the Pennsylvania Constitution also refers to it as a state at times, but that's not the important point; the important point is what American speakers of English call Pennsylvania.)

Likewise, the government of Turkey apparently wants people to call the country Turkiye, but that imposes no obligation on English speakers who have long called it Turkey—just as the Turks have no obligation to call the country they call "İngiltere" by its English name of "England." It's not a "lie" when Americans call the country Turkey, no matter what the Turkish government thinks. It's not "a fact that the" country that occupies that territory "is called" Turkiye. Indeed, it's a fact that it's not generally called Turkiye in English (though perhaps one day it might be, if English speakers eventually decide to go along with this).

Likewise, it's not a "lie," "irresponsible," or "dishonest" when people call the Gulf of Mexico "the Gulf of Mexico," and it's not a fact that it's called "the Gulf of America." It may be called that by President Trump and his subordinates in the Executive Branch, but he doesn't get to determine what's a "fact" on this for the rest of us.

Now that seems to me particularly clear for geographical features that are mostly outside the U.S., such as the Gulf. (What would we think if the Governor of Kentucky announced that the Ohio River should henceforth be called the Kentucky River?) But I don't think my point relies on that. The English name of "Turkey" isn't subject to the control of the Turkish government, and the English name of places even within the U.S. isn't subject to the control of the U.S. government.

When Mount McKinley was renamed Mount Denali by the Obama Administration, that didn't make it a "lie" for people to keep calling it Mount McKinley. The "fact," I expect, was that the mountain had two names at that point, with some people calling it one thing and others another. Now it's been renamed back to Mount McKinley, and the fact remains that it's both Mount McKinley and Mount Denali.

To be sure, over time place names do change, and a governmental renaming can help influence that. I expect very few people still call "New York" "New Amsterdam," except as some sort of historical joke. And of course a governmental decision can lead to one name having one political connotation and another having another. (In this respect, it's those decisions that are "divisive.") I am told, for instance, that this is so with the Burma vs. Myanmar question, and with Bombay vs. Mumbai.

Again, whether the President may retaliate this way against a media entity that doesn't go along with his wishes is a separate matter, which I hope to blog about soon. [UPDATE: See here.] I also appreciate that the whole dispute is likely mostly absurdist political theater.

But, theater or not, framing this as a matter of "lies" or "dishonest[y]" or "misinformation" or rejection of "lawful" decisions strikes me as wrong. It mischaracterizes the way place names actually operate in English (and I expect in most other languages). And it seeks to arrogate to the government—or, more precisely, to the President—power over the English language and its speakers.