Columnist Mark Patinkin ponders new names for Rhode Island and it's cities and towns as the Gulf of Mexico gets renamed.

A geographer explains who decides what goes on the map.

Part of a legal description of a boundary line of Dixie County, for instance, says it goes "southerly down the thread of the main stream of said Suwannee River to the Gulf of Mexico; thence along said Gulf of Mexico, including the waters of said gulf within the jurisdiction of the State of Florida, to the mouth of the Steinhatchee River."

Mapmakers and teachers are re-thinking what to call the gulf of water between Mexico, the United States and Cuba.

For some crazy reason it’s having a renaissance in all my conversations. I can’t stop trotting it out while on the phone or out in public. "Chilly along the Gulf of Mexico," I’ll chip in as I pass someone in a store.

For nearly half a century, there’s been little thought about the name Congress gave to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council — until now. On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an order to rename the waterbody to the “Gulf of America” on federal agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has an answer for President Donald Trump about his idea of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America:” he can call it whatever he wants on the American part of it.

President Trump's executive order renames the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, cast your vote on which name you prefer.

The state of Alaska requested the name change in 1975, but the Board on Geographic Names didn’t take action. Members of the Ohio congressional delegation – President William McKinley was from Ohio – objected over many years to requests to rename the mountain, and the board did not act on those requests.

Among the blizzard of executive orders issued by Donald Trump on his first day back in the Oval Office was one titled Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness. It unilaterally renamed “the area formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico” as the “Gulf of America”.

The cold air will be somewhat limited, but enough arctic air will wrap around the system that a snowstorm could break out in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and portions of the Plains.