Position names are extra than simply labels on a map. They affect how other folks be told concerning 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 way in which that they’re modified through the years can sign cultural shifts.
The US 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 surprising rewriting of the country’s map – achieved to “restore American greatness,” in line with President Donald Trump’s government order that made a few of them reputable – is a part of a reputation recreation 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 claim regulate over shared symbols and embed diffused and not-so-subtle messages within the panorama.
As geography academics and researchers, we additionally acknowledge the training and emotional affect the call recreation will have at the public.
Position names will have mental results
Renaming a spot is all the time an act of energy.
Folks in energy have lengthy used position naming to assert regulate over the id of where, bolster their reputations, retaliate towards combatants and succeed in political objectives.
Those strikes will have sturdy mental results, specifically when the call conjures up 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 faculties firstly named for Accomplice generals had been on an emotional curler coaster of brand name adjustments in recent times. The colleges had been renamed Mountain View and Honey Run in 2020 amid the nationwide uproar over the homicide of George Floyd, a Black guy killed by means of a police officer in Minneapolis.
4 years later, the native college board reinstated the unique Accomplice names after conservatives took regulate of the board.
One Black 8th grader at Mountain View Top College — now re-renamed Stonewall Jackson Top College — testified at a board assembly about how the deliberate trade would impact 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 group or country sees itself – in addition to whose histories and views it considers necessary or worthy of public consideration.
Position names impact how other folks understand, revel in and emotionally hook up with their environment in each mindful and unconscious tactics. Psychologists, sociologists and geographers have explored how this feeling of position manifests itself into the psyche, growing both attachment or aversion to put, whether or not it’s a faculty, mountain or park.
A story of 2 forts
Renaming puts can rally a pace-setter’s supporters via rebranding.
Trump’s orders to revive the names Citadel Bragg and Citadel Benning, each firstly named for Accomplice generals, illustrate this impact. The names had been modified to Citadel Liberty and Citadel Moore in 2023 after Congress handed a legislation banning the usage of Accomplice names for federal installations.
Veterans and different visitors posed in 2023 subsequent to a newly unveiled signal for Citadel 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 Citadel Benning.
Cheney Orr/AFP by the use of Getty Photographs
Trump made a marketing campaign promise to his fans to “bring back the name” of Citadel Bragg if reelected.
To get across the federal ban, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth known two unrelated adorned Military veterans with the similar final names — Bragg and Benning — however with none Accomplice connections, to honor as an alternative.
Name it a sleight of hand or a stroke of genius when you’d like, this tactic allowed the Division of Protection to restore politically charged names with out violating the legislation.
A soldier walks beside an indication that used to be unveiled when Citadel Liberty used to be rededicated as Citadel Bragg right through a rite on base on March 7, 2025.
AP Photograph/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 via their recollections of dwelling and serving at the base, relatively than a connection to the precise namesakes.
Alternatively, the names are nonetheless reminders of the army bases’ unique affiliation with defenders of slavery.
Where-renaming recreation
A wave of place-name adjustments right through the Obama and Biden administrations inquisitive about putting off offensive or derogatory position names and spotting Indigenous names.
For instance, Clingmans Dome, the absolute best height within the Nice Smoky Mountains, used to be 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 complex explicitly to ward off 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 solution a couple of days later asking Trump to rethink.
Georgia Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter made a up to date legislative proposal to rename Greenland as “Red, White, and Blueland” in give a boost to of Trump’s expansionist want to buy the island, which is an self sustaining territory of Denmark.
Danish officers and Greenlanders noticed Carter’s absurd proposal as insulting and destructive to diplomatic members of the family. It’s not the primary time that position renaming has been used as a type of symbolic insult in global members of the family.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of The usa would possibly have first of all gave the impression implausible, however it’s already mirrored in commonplace navigation apps.
Google Maps shows the call ‘Gulf of America’ as an alternative of Gulf of Mexico in March 2025.
Google INEGI
A greater approach to select position names
When leaders rename a spot in an abrupt, unilateral model — frequently for ideological causes — they possibility alienating communities that deeply connect to the ones names as a type of reminiscence, id and position attachment.
A greater choice, in our view, can 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, however it suggests the adjustments will have to 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 via panorama affect tests and important audits that take the desires of affected communities critically — can domesticate a way of shared possession within the determination that can provide the ones names extra endurance.
The most recent position renamings are already affecting the school room revel in. Scholars don’t seem to be 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 sector.
As historical past has proven world wide, one of the vital primary downsides of leaders implementing call adjustments is that the names can also be simply changed once the following regime takes energy. The outcome generally is a endless call recreation.
