There are two basic ideas about the relation of a name to what it names, both of which have some intuitive sway. On the first, a name is purely conventional and could be changed at will. We all know this is true. We pluck the names of children off lists, often before they’re born, based on tradition or euphony. We don't look into the baby's eyes and see her true name. We decide on the names of people and places, and though it can be interesting to talk about how we do that, there's no point in insisting that we or the relevant people couldn’t have called them something else.
On the second idea about naming, a name is in some way connected to what it names: a name can be particularly appropriate or “true” to it (and perhaps fail to be). In an extreme version, this could be a “magical” account of naming: to know the true name of something, or give something its true name, yields power over it. But you don't have to commit to wizardry to think of names as powerful: the power to change social conventions is a real power, and renaming something can have propaganda effects, effects on how people think. Changing the names can amount to altering important social conventions, and changing the names of many things at once can render the language incomprehensible.
And it seems more and more like we’re changing the names of many things at once. Or rather, it seems that renaming things is central to the way Donald Trump conceives the power of the presidency.
He started with nicknames, including Little Marco and Low-Energy Jeb. (Low-Energy Jeb, hasn’t been heard from since he was renamed. Or maybe he has, but no one’s capable any longer of noticing.) As president the second time round, however, Trump has redoubled his emphasis on the naming power. He's tried to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America,” for example, and un-rename Mt. Denali to Mt. McKinley, while un-renaming military bases back to their proud Confederate origins. Testing the presidential naming power still further, he’s contemplating replacing “Persian Gulf” with “Arabian Gulf” for the body of waters that separates Iran (“Persia”) from the Arabian peninsula, including Saudi Arabia.
Maybe the purpose of this, or the purpose of playing around with the notion, is merely to irritate Iran while pleasing Mohammed bin Salman. It's certainly the cheapest way to accomplish such feats: Trump's just yapping. This ease might be taken to confirm the merely conventional status of names. On the other hand, the offense that all Iranians have apparently taken to the proposal (to which they seem to be as hostile as Canadians are to US annexation) might return us to the power of words, even as social conventions. "I don't know if feelings are going to be hurt," Trump remarks. But hurting your feelings is what all the re-namings, from Little Marco to the Arabian Gulf, are for.
"Mr. Trump has the power to order changes to geographical names as they are used in the United States. But other countries do not have to honor those changes," says The New York Times. But the Times and others among us may be stunned to learn that the power to rename isn’t enshrined in the Constitution. As far that document is concerned, the President has no more power to rename things than does any ordinary toddler. Despite the Times' flat assertion, Trump has no direct power over map-makers, encyclopedia writers, newspapers, atlases, social media posts, or even teachers to change the names of gulfs.
The suggestion that the American president has the "power to order changes to geographical names as they are used in the United States" is puzzling, I want to say to Times United Nations bureau chief Farnaz Fassihi. It indicates that Trump would have the power to determine how American cartographers and publishers (for example, Google Maps or the Times itself) would refer to places around the world. This would be a bizarrely unconstitutional infringement on free speech. I refer to the Gulf of Mexico/America as "the Love Puddle." Can't no one stop me. Or rather, I'm sure they can, but I'm also sure they'd be violating the Constitution.
What the president can probably do is change the way documents produced by the executive branch refer to various geographical features and regions. The United States Board on Geographic Names, operating under the aegis of the Interior Department, has the task of "maintaining uniform usage throughout the federal government," but its mandate can’t possibly extend beyond that.
Meanwhile, keep in mind that the presidential power to rename isn’t a magical power and also not a constitutional power. Everyone who’s not employed by the federal government should just ignore it. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio must get a certain pang every time he dips his little toe into the Gulf of America.
—Follow Crispin Sartwell on X: @CrispinSartwell