Place names are extra than simply labels on a map. They affect how folks be taught in regards to the world round them and understand their place 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 over time can sign cultural shifts.
America is within the midst of a place-renaming second. From the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, to the return 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 place naming.
This sudden rewriting of the nation’s map – executed to “restore American greatness,” in line with President Donald Trump’s government order that made a few of them official – is a part of a reputation sport that acknowledges place names as highly effective manufacturers and political instruments.
In our analysis on place naming, we discover how this “identify sport” is used to say management over shared symbols and embed delicate and not-so-subtle messages within the panorama.
As geography lecturers and researchers, we additionally acknowledge the tutorial and emotional impression the identify sport can have on the general public.
Place names can have psychological results
Renaming a spot is all the time an act of energy.
Folks in energy have lengthy used place naming to declare management over the identification of the place, bolster their reputations, retaliate towards opponents and obtain political targets.
These strikes can have sturdy psychological results, significantly when the identify evokes one thing threatening. Altering a spot identify can basically shift how folks view, relate to or really feel that they belong inside that place.
In Shenandoah County, Virginia, college students at two colleges initially named for Accomplice generals have been on an emotional curler coaster of identify adjustments lately. The faculties have been renamed Mountain View and Honey Run in 2020 amid the nationwide uproar over the homicide of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a police officer in Minneapolis.
4 years later, the native faculty board reinstated the unique Accomplice names after conservatives took management of the board.
One Black eighth grader at Mountain View Excessive College — now re-renamed Stonewall Jackson Excessive College — testified at a board assembly about how the deliberate change would have an effect on her:
“I must characterize a person that fought for my ancestors to be slaves. If this board decides to revive the names, I might not really feel like I used to be valued and revered,” she stated. The board nonetheless accredited the change, 5-1.
Even exterior of faculties, place names function as a “hidden curriculum.” They supply narratives to the general public about how the group or nation sees itself – in addition to whose histories and views it considers necessary or worthy of public consideration.
Place names have an effect on how folks understand, expertise and emotionally hook up with their environment in each acutely aware and unconscious methods. Psychologists, sociologists and geographers have explored how this sense of place manifests itself into the psyche, creating both attachment or aversion to position, whether or not it’s a college, mountain or park.
A story of two forts
Renaming locations can rally a frontrunner’s supporters by means of rebranding.
Trump’s orders to revive the names Fort Bragg and Fort Benning, each initially named for Accomplice generals, illustrate this impact. The names have been modified to Fort Liberty and Fort Moore in 2023 after Congress handed a legislation banning using Accomplice names for federal installations.
Cheney Orr/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Trump made a marketing campaign promise to his followers to “deliver again the identify” of Fort Bragg if reelected.
To get across the federal ban, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth recognized two unrelated adorned Military veterans with the identical 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 should you’d like, this tactic allowed the Division of Protection to revive politically charged names with out violating the legislation.
AP Picture/Chris Seward
The restoration of the names Bragg and Benning might really feel like a symbolic homecoming for many who resisted the unique identify change or have emotional ties to the names by means of their recollections of dwelling and serving on the bottom, fairly than a connection to the precise namesakes.
Nonetheless, the names are nonetheless reminders of the navy bases’ authentic affiliation with defenders of slavery.
The place-renaming sport
A wave of place-name adjustments in the course of the Obama and Biden administrations targeted on eradicating offensive or derogatory place names and recognizing Indigenous names.
For instance, Clingmans Dome, the best peak within the Nice Smoky Mountains, was renamed to Kuwohi in September 2024, shifting the identify from a Accomplice basic to a Cherokee phrase which means “the mulberry place.”
Beneath the Trump administration, nevertheless, place-name adjustments are being superior explicitly to push again towards reform efforts, a part of a broader assault on what Trump calls “woke tradition.”
Nationwide Park Service
Learn extra:
From Accomplice basic to Cherokee heritage: Why returning the identify Kuwohi to the Nice Smoky Mountains issues
President Barack Obama modified Alaska’s Mount McKinley to Denali in 2015 to acknowledge Indigenous heritage and a long-standing identify for the mountain. Officers in Alaska had requested the identify change to Denali years earlier and supported the identify change in 2015.
Trump, on his first day in workplace in January 2025, moved to rename Denali again to Mount McKinley, over the opposition of Republican politicians in Alaska. The state Legislature handed a decision a couple of days later asking Trump to rethink.
Georgia Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter made a latest legislative proposal to rename Greenland as “Pink, White, and Blueland” in assist of Trump’s expansionist want to buy the island, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Danish officers and Greenlanders noticed Carter’s absurd proposal as insulting and damaging to diplomatic relations. It’s not the primary time that place renaming has been used as a type of symbolic insult in worldwide relations.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America might need initially appeared unbelievable, however it’s already mirrored in widespread navigation apps.
Google INEGI
Learn extra:
Sure, Trump can rename the Gulf of Mexico – simply not for everybody. Right here’s the way it works
A greater means to decide on place names
When leaders rename a spot in an abrupt, unilateral trend — typically for ideological causes — they danger alienating communities that deeply join with these names as a type of reminiscence, identification and place attachment.
A higher various, in our view, can be to make renaming shared landscapes participatory, with alternatives for significant public involvement within the renaming course of.
This strategy doesn’t keep away from identify adjustments, however it suggests the adjustments ought to reply to the social and psychological wants of communities and the evolving cultural identification of locations — and never merely be used to attain political factors.
As an alternative, encouraging public participation — reminiscent of by means of panorama impression assessments and essential audits that take the wants of affected communities significantly — can domesticate a way of shared possession within the choice that will give these names extra endurance.
The newest place renamings are already affecting the classroom expertise. College students aren’t simply memorizing new place labels, however they’re additionally being requested to reevaluate the which means of these locations and their very own relationship with the nation and the world.
As historical past has proven world wide, one of many main downsides of leaders imposing identify adjustments is that the names could be simply changed as quickly as the subsequent regime takes energy. The consequence generally is a unending identify sport.
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