In light of recent events, here's OpenStreetMap editors discussing naming of the Gulf of Mexico (community.openstreetmap.org)
from zlatiah@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 2025 01:30
https://lemmy.world/post/25458130

As of revision version #85, OpenStreetMap has the following tags for Golfo de México:

#technology

threaded - newest

solrize@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 2025 01:55 next collapse

Let’s rename Montezuma’s Revenge to Trump’s Revenge while we are at it.

singletona@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 2025 01:58 next collapse

As an american. I want the option to display it as Gulf of Mexico. Like it’s always been before that fat sack of shit was trying to win points wit hracists to distract them from the hand reaching up their ass to fuck them.

1995ToyotaCorolla@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 2025 02:38 next collapse

As an American I have to second this. Please don’t fall in line to lick trump’s boot

beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org on 12 Feb 2025 02:48 next collapse

As an American and long time OSM contributor, I also vote extremely no on Gulf of America.

Also no on renaming New Mexico.

Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 12 Feb 2025 03:15 next collapse

Wait there’s talk of renaming New Mexico‽

after some digging

Oh thank god it was just a joke

SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de on 12 Feb 2025 03:25 next collapse

Oh thank god it was just a joke

for now

Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 12 Feb 2025 04:22 collapse

I’m hoping that my comment doesn’t age like milk

Rivalarrival@lemmy.today on 12 Feb 2025 03:59 next collapse

New Mexico? You mean “South America”, right?

(Everything south of the Rio Grande is now “Mexico”. Except for the Panama America canal.)

TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub on 12 Feb 05:28 next collapse

Next month:

  • Texas -> Roof Tiles
  • El Paso -> The Pass
  • The Alamo -> The Poplar
  • Santa Fe -> Holy Faith
  • Nevada -> Snowed
  • Colorado -> Red
  • Palo Alto -> High Stick
  • Nogales -> Walnuts
  • Los Angeles -> The Angels

Paper companies would make a killing profit this period.

kent_eh@lemmy.ca on 13 Feb 15:12 next collapse

Baton Rouge -> Red Stick

diemartin@sh.itjust.works on 13 Feb 15:52 collapse

  • Nogales -> Walnuts

How about you rename deez (wal)nutz

Sorry, had to

beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org on 12 Feb 05:45 collapse

But you couldn’t tell, could you. 😂 I’m keeping this joke alive as long as I can, until Trump gets wind of it and actually does it.

Railcar8095@lemm.ee on 12 Feb 12:53 collapse

“Petition to rename New Mexico to Freexico, and Mexico to Cartelistan”

joostjakob@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 06:25 next collapse

So now that is in the hands of the folks who use the OSM data. It’s in a somewhat exotic tag, so by default any map that uses OSM will still show Gulf of Mexico, unless they actively intervene to show Gulf of America. So if you see an OSM based map showing the latter, you know they made that choice consciously.

SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org on 12 Feb 12:03 collapse

They could add a snowflake option that when activated makes it display as Gulf of America.

heavydust@sh.itjust.works on 12 Feb 19:45 collapse

A checkbox labelled “Triggered” on the phone.

Embargo@lemm.ee on 12 Feb 2025 02:03 next collapse

Mexicogolfen is pretty good.

thejoker954@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 2025 02:39 next collapse

Just like I never called french fries freedom fries, I will never call the gulf of mexico the gulf of america

adespoton@lemmy.ca on 12 Feb 2025 02:58 next collapse

Persian Gulf or Gulf of Iran?

A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 2025 03:47 next collapse

Comes down to the language/data of the user I guess

Edit: I’ll be using this with my Gulf War veteran father tho, bet your ass

SomethingBurger@jlai.lu on 12 Feb 11:10 collapse

I just checked, and OSM has it as Persian Gulf, with the alternative name Arabian Gulf.

I3lackshirts94@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 2025 03:12 next collapse

If he is just going to make executive order to change shit he doesn’t like and not follow the law. Who says I have to follow them too? Still the Gulf of Mexico to me! 😂

Vanth@reddthat.com on 12 Feb 2025 03:18 next collapse

Can we poll the community for alternate names that would enrage Trump? If it’s gonna change, let’s have fun with it.

Gulf of Veganism and Low Cholesterol

Gulf of Checks and Balances

Gulf of 34 Felony Counts

Gulf of Cheetos (let’s get those sweet advertising dollars while we’re at it)

Gulf of Insecurity

Kamala-Clinton Gulf

raynethackery@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 05:13 next collapse

Gulf of Musk

Akasazh@feddit.nl on 12 Feb 11:12 collapse

🤢🤮

daggermoon@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 20:00 next collapse

How about Gulf of they/them?

diemartin@sh.itjust.works on 13 Feb 16:02 collapse

Gulf of 34 Felony Counts

We could tell these fuckers that Trump broke 34 rules and to Google “trump rule 34”, but given a) Trump’s history in the sexual department, and b) the fact most of them will actually jack off to this, I don’t think it’s a good idea

veniasilente@lemm.ee on 12 Feb 2025 03:24 next collapse

  • name:en: Gulf of Mexico
  • stupid_name:en-US-confederate-bootlicker: Gulf of Amerikkka

That should suffice.

inbeesee@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 16:34 collapse

OSM has a tag for everything, wow 😇❤️

catloaf@lemm.ee on 12 Feb 2025 04:35 next collapse

Fun fact, per the executive order, the whole body isn’t being renamed the Gulf of America, only 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”. That is, less than the northern half, as indicated in this map: …wikimedia.org/…/File:US_ECS_Regions_2023.png

I hope this is due to someone intentionally wording it to sound correct, but in reality being extra screwy so that they look like fools.

gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works on 13 Feb 03:25 collapse

That’s like… slightly more reasonable than I thought it was. But it’s still deeply fucking stupid.

deathbird@mander.xyz on 12 Feb 06:02 next collapse

Literally no one ever called it “Gulf of America” until January. I appreciate the generally thoughtful conversation on OSM, but there’s no reason that declaration should be taken seriously.

fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com on 12 Feb 13:00 collapse

The maintainers were doing a good job reverting contributions for a while. Here’s a good example: community.openstreetmap.org/t/…/16

They follow names assigned by unstats.un.org/unsd/ungegn/, and use the labels like en_US for official single-country names. While I would much prefer it remain an alt_name, I understand their rational. Ugh.

deathbird@mander.xyz on 12 Feb 14:33 collapse

Yeah I feel like there needs to be a huge asterisk by name declarations that, while formal/official in the barest sense, are blatantly arbitrary.

the_doktor@lemmy.zip on 12 Feb 17:48 next collapse

How is it the “official name” even for en-US? Trump isn’t the be all and end all of naming things. Every single rational, thinking person in the USA, and many, many people who aren’t so rational (Trump voters), still call it the Gulf of Mexico and always will. Official, my ass.

The early proposal of alt-name: en-US=Gulf of America seemed the most logical.

Holy hell, I hate this cursed timeline.

JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz on 12 Feb 19:57 collapse

Because the United States Board on Geographic Names now says so, as demanded by Trump by Order No. 3423. They are the government body that defines what places are officially called.

But unless you are a US federal employee, as Nick Fury once said, “I recognize the council has made a decision, but given that it’s a stupid-ass decision, I’ve elected to ignore it.”

uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 12 Feb 19:27 next collapse

As I explained to Google (from Dan McClellan) _references do not assert from fiat what things are called. A dictionary definition is not an official definition but what a word means or what a thing is called at the moment.

Most of the world calls it the Golfo de México or in English speaking regions, the Gulf of Mexico. Changing all the maps of the world won’t change this.

Now granted, a state chooses what to call itself (such as the changing of The Ukraine to simply Ukraine but that is the incorporated entity that is the sovereign nation of Ukraine.

As the US does not have sovereign control of the Gulf of Mexico, it doesn’t get to declare the name of a region of international waters.

This whole thing just makes the GOP, MAGA, the Trump administration and by proxy the people of the United States xenophobic and barbaric as hell. It’s not a good look.

daggermoon@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 19:57 next collapse

As an American, I will refuse to call it fuckass gulf of america.

RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com on 12 Feb 20:41 next collapse

… what’s a fuckass?

hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 12 Feb 21:08 next collapse

Search for ‘anal’ in your Lemmy instance

RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com on 12 Feb 22:46 collapse

Mmm mmm…

LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Feb 00:08 next collapse

Coming from lemmynsfw I would have figured you might know? Let me know if you learn anything in your research

RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com on 13 Feb 02:27 collapse

It’s a Donnie Darko reference. I’m surprised anyone cares who comes from what instance.

JonEFive@midwest.social on 13 Feb 04:45 next collapse

I’m voting for Dukakis

Rooty@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 05:01 next collapse

Reference comments should stay on reddit.

RedditRefugee69@lemmynsfw.com on 13 Feb 14:40 collapse

Only if they detract from a discussion of substance.

LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Feb 10:13 collapse

Nah, I don’t care who comes from what instance but when it comes to anal references, I figured I’d make a bad joke, haha

daggermoon@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 05:54 next collapse

It’s just slang. I searched it on Startpage and it gives the definition : “used alone or as a noun or verb in various phrases to express annoyance, contempt, or impatience” which sounds right to me. I’d link it but I can’t find where it sourced the definition.

figjam@midwest.social on 13 Feb 10:54 collapse

I got your Donnie Darko reference.

djehuti@programming.dev on 13 Feb 13:23 next collapse

I dunno. That could be kinda snappy on a map. “Ok, let’s see, here we have the North Atlantic, the Sargasso Sea, and the Fuckass Gulf of America.”

mr_jaaay@lemmy.ml on 19 Feb 14:52 collapse

IDK, the fuckass kind of gives it a ring, you know? Maybe fuckass Gulf of Mexico?

xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Feb 11:57 next collapse

it was never “the ukraine”, russia just called it that because the ukraine was a region to them… like the great plains is to america…

zaphod@sopuli.xyz on 13 Feb 12:38 collapse

Russian doesn’t even have definite articles, to them it was always just Ukraine.

DonAntonioMagino@feddit.nl on 13 Feb 14:48 collapse

Judging from this very polemic article by linguistic anthropologist Kathryn E. Graber, the argument is that a linguistic distinction that exists in Russian (and Ukrainian) is mirrorred in other languages using the definite article. ‘Na Ukraine’ on the one hand literally means ‘on Ukraine’, ‘v Ukraine’ on the other ‘in Ukraine’. Graber goes on to say that ‘In Russian, a person is “na” an unbounded territory, such as a hill, but “v” a bounded territory that is defined politically or institutionally, such as a nation-state.’ She would then probably also argue that the same, in English, goes for names like ‘the Congo’, being named after a river. The claim that this is a Soviet-era practice (if what she means by that is that it arose during the Soviet Union), is simply not true, though. In Google Books you can find plenty of titles with ‘the Ukraine’ from before 1900. The earliest mention I found in English (though I didn’t look very well) was from 1672.

It anyway strikes me as very performative. You can well argue that language influences the way we view the world (though, I think the way we view the world influences the language we use much more). Even so, there are obviously much bigger (concrete) threats to Ukrainian sovereignty than (to Ukrainians) foreigners using a definite article or not. Thus, it becomes less a matter of protecting sovereignty, and more a matter of simple respect to Ukrainian sensibilities. Ukrainians may take offence at you using the definite article, and you may want to prevent that by not saying ‘the Ukraine’.

chilicheeselies@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 14:12 collapse

Its just a distraction meant to throw people off the smell of the real crimes they are committing. Call it the gulf of dogshit i dont care

SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social on 12 Feb 20:01 next collapse

Honestly, I think that we the people need to assert our own right to name things more often. I don’t recall the latest name of the Brewers stadium in Milwaukee, for example. Whatever company that paid to have them put its name on the front didn’t pay me. It’s “the new County Stadium” as far as I’m concerned.

(I have no philosophical objection to the name, by the way. Reps of the new company can DM me, we can work out a deal.)

specialseaweed@sh.itjust.works on 12 Feb 20:32 next collapse

An acquaintance helped close a deal for a stadium naming rights. It had been a multi year process, the negotiations were crazy, the company deliberated forever trying to decide if this was the best way to increase brand recognition and man that shits expensive.

So like a shit head that thinks he’s funny I started calling the stadium by its sponsor like 3 sponsors ago when I was around them. You could see the anxiety spike when I did it.

Your comment made me think of that. It’s hilarious. They would have had a fucking breakdown if they had heard someone say that out loud.

zlatiah@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 20:36 next collapse

Frankly I agree. From my personal experience, every single native Chicagoan has been calling that particular building “Sears Tower”. Even though the name has been officially changed for more than 15 years by this point…

And I thin OSM actually handled this quite well! The original Sears Tower name is still available as an “alt_name” tag on OSM as well, I just double-checked and yep it’s still searchable on the map

captainlezbian@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 23:44 next collapse

Ask any illinoisan what the tallest tower in Chicago is and you won’t hear the name that’s on the building. And good for them

DJDarren@sopuli.xyz on 13 Feb 06:25 collapse

There’s a county cricket ground near me that was named the Hampshire Rose Bowl when it was first opened 25 years ago. In that time it has been renamed a number of times in honour of a selection of insurance companies I’d never heard of before, but to pretty much everyone in the area it’s the Rose Bowl.

So yeah.

qaz@lemmy.world on 12 Feb 20:32 next collapse

To reiterate, GNIS and GNS are only relevant to an appropriately qualified official_name tag, not a name tag, because of the on the ground rule. For this kind of feature, common sense would place a lot of weight on overall common usage, since sending someone to survey the facts “on the ground” would be… difficult.

Yeah that certainly seems difficult

CritFail@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 00:18 next collapse

Since Trump is slang for fart in UK, I propose it be re-renamed to Guff of America in his honour. I bet he wouldn’t even notice.

JackFrostNCola@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 11:10 collapse

Apparently the family name moving to America was “Trumpf”, so that fits well given its a fart with a little trailing ‘pfff’, likely caused from the subtle loosening of a well used asshole.

letsgo@lemm.ee on 13 Feb 01:08 next collapse

For the next four years I also propose renaming en_us to an-us.

cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 13 Feb 11:55 next collapse

derp_us

zaphod@sopuli.xyz on 13 Feb 12:29 collapse

Aragonese?

Bojack411@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 05:42 next collapse

Hey. Your all blinded by this nothing and elon is getting contracts of money he dismantled from government. Congrats americans. Hope another cou try can put us in our place.

DJDarren@sopuli.xyz on 13 Feb 06:22 next collapse

It’s possible to know about this while also knowing that extreme fuckery is occurring. But its not like your average Lemmy user can do anything to stop either.

mPony@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 11:30 next collapse

no doubt it’s all been squirrelled away into crypto. They’ll have fun trying to hold the guy accountable. Oh wait, no, accountability is for the poors.
Anyway, enjoy the sound of the keys jingling, folks

xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 13 Feb 12:08 next collapse

thank you, enlightened one… we are all forgetting every other crazy thing they’re doing and focusing exclusively on map apps….
we’re all so blind, thank you for helping us see!

MangoCats@feddit.it on 13 Feb 13:09 next collapse

Current U.S. leadership: Our billionaires are gonna be bigger than all the other billionaires in the world put together. (I honestly believe there’s an insecurity motive there: if US billionaires don’t amass significantly more wealth, they won’t be competitive in the billionaire world against outside billionaires.)

U.S. Democracy: If one dollar = one vote, I guess we should save all that money we have been wasting on elections.

The real reason for the surge in prosperity of the middle and lower classes after WWII: decimation of the ultra-wealthy throughout the developed world. Remember: the post WWII US income tax on the wealthy was 91% - literal decimation, for those who paid.

wolterskluwer.com/…/whole-ball-of-tax-historical-…

untorquer@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 14:16 next collapse

They also returned from the war to a much stronger welfare system.

MangoCats@feddit.it on 13 Feb 16:01 collapse

Oh, hell yeah. My parents got 4 and 6 year college degrees based off the income of a teacher, hairdresser, mechanic, and night watchman. 100% debt free. Then their parents, who had $0 to their name at the start of WWII, helped my parents again by buying them a starter house. My parents were both school teachers, on that salary they built a new house in a golf course subdivision, new cars every couple of years including a brand new 6 cylinder BMW… Then the 80s came.

kent_eh@lemmy.ca on 13 Feb 15:07 collapse

(I honestly believe there’s an insecurity motive there

Once you have more money than you could reasonably spend in a lifetime, it just becomes another penis measuring contest for insecure manchildren.

MangoCats@feddit.it on 13 Feb 16:00 collapse

I could see myself wanting to own multiple private islands, getting Larry Ellison to sell me Lanai is going to take a lot of money.

hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 13 Feb 13:27 collapse

What specifically do you think that OSM maintainers should be doing to stop this instead of maintaining OSM?

Also coup has a p.

lmuel@sopuli.xyz on 13 Feb 12:23 next collapse

Why is this even being discussed?

Are they discussing renaming Taiwan to China as well?

MangoCats@feddit.it on 13 Feb 12:58 next collapse

One way a global index can respect local authority would be for the index to acknowledge that within that territory, there is an official name for things.

They can also be pragmatic and acknowledge a common local name, the global consensus name, etc.

In many ways, it’s just a further fragmentation like language.

roguetrick@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 13:20 next collapse

Are you taking about Formosa or the Republic of China?

barsoap@lemm.ee on 13 Feb 15:19 next collapse

Taiwan is the island, also known as Formosa, and it is ruled by the Republic of China. Separately, but still part of that state, there’s the autonomous mainland provinces, calling themselves the People’s Republic of China, a rebel faction which somehow steadfastly refuses to declare independence.

lmuel@sopuli.xyz on 13 Feb 16:25 collapse

Looking at it this way, I’d call the “mainland” part West Taiwan

barsoap@lemm.ee on 13 Feb 16:39 collapse

Nah West Taiwan is the western half of Taiwan. It’s an island, not a state, just as Denmark is not Jutland, or Spain, or Portugal (fight!) Iberia.

[deleted] on 13 Feb 20:21 next collapse

.

roguetrick@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 20:21 collapse

You’re getting downvoted but you ain’t wrong.

perviouslyiner@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 17:13 collapse

The name itself can’t really change in OSM because it’s based on what someone “on the ground” would see, i.e. street signs, etc.

Previous OSM naming conflicts have usually been areas of disputed land where some group de-facto controls the land/people and therefore the street signs, and therefore the OSM ‘name’ tag.

That’s not going to work very well for a big region of mostly international waters between several countries.

ivanafterall@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 13:59 next collapse

I’m going to be looking for ways to make the name even more Mexican now. Maybe just perfect my Spanish at least for that one phrase. Gwalfo de Meh-hee-co

m33@theprancingpony.in on 13 Feb 15:49 next collapse

@zlatiah Best comment in this thread: " Can we retag Trump’s golf courses as Golf of Mexico? " 🤣

RxBrad@infosec.pub on 13 Feb 17:09 next collapse

Such a weird thing for everyone to fixate on and lose their shit. Let our dumbass en-US selves do whatever “official” dumbass thing we have to with the name.

Everyone else can leave it what it always was.

Next time there’s a Democrat U.S. President, the “en-US” term will be changed back to Gulf of Mexico.

This is stupid.

renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net on 13 Feb 18:48 next collapse

You’re right. It’s part of a propaganda strategy to trick US media to “discuss” trivial things like this instead of focusing on the real harm the administration is doing.

JackbyDev@programming.dev on 13 Feb 18:57 collapse

It’s true and it’s such a distraction. There is so much worse shit going on right now in the US government. I’m tired of not calling it a coup. It’s a coup. They’re trying to act like the judicial branch doesn’t get to determine what is and isn’t constitutional. So much shit.

As bad and as cringe as it is for the “Gulf of America” debacle to happen, it’s just genuinely not worth the headspace right now.

Vinstaal0@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 17:19 next collapse

It’s calles the Gulf of Mexico, people should stop using different names in different languages and use the actual name.

Like The Netherlands is called The Netherlands and two of it’s provinces are called Holland

funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works on 13 Feb 18:58 collapse

it’s a tricky question, arguably there are more people on this planet that call countries by their Mandarin name, followed by their Spanish name, followed by their English name, than the name in the native language.

De Guo > Alemania > Germany > Deutschland for example

feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 20:52 collapse

Which is why I’ll never call Turkey “Türkiye”, though they’re free to call themselves that. I don’t see Germany insisting I call it Deutschland, after all.

AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip on 13 Feb 19:11 next collapse

It is the gulf of mexico. The whole thing is just president musk and vp trump power tripping. Also a distraction from other, much worse thjngs happening right now.

captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works on 13 Feb 19:32 next collapse

Personally I’d prefer it if they spent all four years renaming things to Mount Hitler or whatever instead of doing anything actual.

echodot@feddit.uk on 14 Feb 11:53 collapse

If it was left up to Trump he probably would. I don’t think he’s entirely sane at this point, unfortunately there are plenty of people manipulating things behind the scenes and they do have plans.

ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net on 13 Feb 19:42 next collapse

That’s what my dog does.

He tears into the couch in one side of the house to get you annoyed, then runs to eat cat litter, then runs upstairs to take the kid’s toys.

Do enough chaos to get something and tire us out.

Slovene@feddit.nl on 13 Feb 20:45 collapse

OMG, we have to see pics of this cute criminal!

Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works on 13 Feb 21:12 collapse

Idk if this is true, but someone brought up it might be related to Biden putting in an order to not allow new drilling in the gulf of Mexico, so to get around it Trump and Co Just renamed it.

Again, no idea if this is true, haven’t had a chance to look it up since I heard it an hour ago or so, but it sounds plausible lol

echodot@feddit.uk on 14 Feb 11:54 collapse

Yeah but couldn’t he just resend the law. I can’t see why renaming it would be required, also if that’s true, what a stupid loophole.

feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world on 13 Feb 20:50 collapse

Golfo de México is just as annoying, well done.