The Name Game: Confusing the Elderly in Their Declining Years

Trump reverses Obama's change of Mt. McKinley to Denali, while concocting a new name for the Gulf of Mexico.

That is no country for old men.

W. B. Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium.

From the Associated Press:

Trump order seeks to change the name of North America’s tallest peak from Denali to Mount McKinley

By BECKY BOHRER

Updated 7:02 PM PST, January 20, 2025

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — President Donald Trump issued an executive order Monday calling for North America’s tallest peak — Denali in Alaska — to be renamed Mount McKinley, reviving an idea he’d floated years ago and drawing a rebuke from Alaska’s Republican senior senator.

The order came hours after Trump, who took office for a second time Monday, said he planned to “restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs. President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent.”

According to the National Park Service, a prospector in 1896 dubbed the peak “Mount McKinley” for William McKinley, who was elected president that year. McKinley had never been to Alaska. The name was formally recognized by the U.S. government until it was changed in 2015 by the Obama administration to Denali

When I visited Alaska in 1988, the mountain was named Mount McKinley and the national park it is in had been called Denali National Park since 1980. The National Park had been called Mt. McKinley National Park since 1917, but in 1978 Jimmy Carter created a neighboring Denali National Monument. In 1980, the two units were merged with the junior one giving its name to the agglomeration of Denali National Park.

That seemed like a reasonable compromise to me at the time. With both names in effect, you could use whichever one came naturally to you with only moderate chance for confusion.

In contrast, complete name changes confuse everybody past about their sophomore year in collage, and provide fodder to the easily offended, encouraging their tendencies toward obnoxious verbal puritanism.

Hence, in 2015, Obama changed Mt. McKinley to Denali (not Mt. Denali, just Denali).

Hopefully, Trump is going back to that compromise of the 1980s: reversing Obama’s 10 year old name change of Mt. McKinley to Denali but also leaving Carter’s 45 year old Denali National Park.

In the same executive order Monday, Trump also called for changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Sorry, President Trump, but I’m way too old to start calling the Gulf of Mexico by a new name.

Here comes the paywall followed by 1800 more words.