United Nations and U.S. face map disputes over geography and naming

Maps are increasingly becoming sites of political contention due to the subjective choices involved in their creation, such as country centering, relative sizing, and nomenclature.

At the United Nations, the General Assembly recently endorsed a map that depicts Africa more accurately and at a larger scale. The vote passed with 164 countries in favor, six abstaining, and the United States voting against the change.

In the United States, executive orders have also been used to alter geographic names. President Donald Trump signed orders to rename Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’ and the Gulf of Mexico to the ‘Gulf of America’. While some technology companies like Google and Apple updated their maps for U.S. users to reflect these changes, others, such as MapQuest and the Canadian government, did not.