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 recommend what’s and isn’t valued in society. And the best way that they’re modified over time can signal cultural shifts.
The US is in the midst of a place-renaming moment. 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 – achieved to “restore American greatness,” in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive order that made some of them official – is a part of a reputation sport that acknowledges place names as powerful brands and political tools.
In our research on place naming, we discover how this “identify sport” is used to say management over shared symbols and embed refined and not-so-subtle messages within the panorama.
As geography teachers 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 at all times an act of power.
Individuals in energy have long used place naming to claim control over the id of the place, bolster their reputations, retaliate against opponents and obtain political objectives.
These strikes can have robust psychological effects, significantly when the identify evokes one thing threatening. Altering a spot identify can essentially shift how folks view, relate to or really feel that they belong within 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 had 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 college board reinstated the original Confederate names after conservatives took management of the board.
One Black eighth grader at Mountain View Excessive Faculty — now re-renamed Stonewall Jackson Excessive Faculty — testified at a board meeting about how the deliberate change would have an effect on her:
“I must signify 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 approved the change, 5-1.
Even exterior of colleges, 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 connect with their environment in both conscious and subconscious ways. 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 leader’s supporters through rebranding.
Trump’s orders to revive the names Fort Bragg and Fort Benning, each initially named for Accomplice generals, illustrate this impact. The names had been modified to Fort Liberty and Fort Moore in 2023 after Congress passed a law banning the use of Confederate names for federal installations.
Cheney Orr/AFP via Getty Images
Trump made a campaign promise to his followers to “convey 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 regulation.
AP Photo/Chris Seward
The restoration of the names Bragg and Benning might really feel like a symbolic homecoming for individuals who resisted the unique identify change or have emotional ties to the names via their recollections of residing and serving on the bottom, somewhat than a connection to the precise namesakes.
Nevertheless, the names are nonetheless reminders of the army bases’ original association with defenders of slavery.
The place-renaming sport
A wave of place-name adjustments throughout the Obama and Biden administrations targeted on removing 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 that means “the mulberry place.”
Beneath the Trump administration, nonetheless, place-name adjustments are being superior explicitly to push back in opposition to reform efforts, a part of a broader assault on what Trump calls “woke tradition.”
National Park Service
Learn extra:
From Confederate general to Cherokee heritage: Why returning the name Kuwohi to the Great Smoky Mountains matters
President Barack Obama modified Alaska’s Mount McKinley to Denali in 2015 to acknowledge Indigenous heritage and a long-standing identify for the mountain. Officials in Alaska had requested the name 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 back to Mount McKinley, over the opposition of Republican politicians in Alaska. The state Legislature passed a resolution a couple of days later asking Trump to rethink.
Georgia Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter made a recent legislative proposal to rename Greenland as “Crimson, 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 form of symbolic insult in international relations.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America might need initially appeared inconceivable, however it’s already reflected in common navigation apps.
Google INEGI
A greater method to decide on place names
When leaders rename a spot in an abrupt, unilateral style — usually for ideological causes — they threat alienating communities that deeply join with these names as a type of reminiscence, id and place attachment.
A better alternative, in our view, could be to make renaming shared landscapes participatory, with alternatives for significant public involvement within the renaming course of.
This method 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 id of locations — and never merely be used to attain political factors.
As an alternative, encouraging public participation — comparable to via landscape impact assessments and critical audits that take the wants of affected communities severely — 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 experience. College students are usually not simply memorizing new place labels, however they’re additionally being requested to reevaluate the that means of these locations and their own relationship with the nation and the world.
As history has shown around the world, 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 end result is usually a endless identify sport.
