February 13, 2012--Gulf of America

He now says it was a joke--to bring attention to all the anti-immigrant talk--but Mississippi state representative Steve Holland's proposal to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America garnered lots of attention and support. Support from the same folks he was attempting to mock. This sounds just like--remember them--Freedom Fries when we jingoistically were feeling dissed by France for not supporting our invasion of Iraq.

As the Culture Wars reignite just as the economy freshens (any connection?) we are again obsessing about how much of a theocracy we want to be (really how much of a Christian nation) and ramping up the call to make "English the official language of the United States" (which of course it already is).

Those who want to change the name of the Gulf could do a lot more than just that. Since the Gulf of Mexico is as much Mexican (check your map) as American (also look up what American more hemispherically refers to--hint, not just the United States), we should focus on the many other Spanish names, and while we're doing that we might as well get rid of all the Native American place names in the United States.

I'd be curious to know what Rep. Holland might come up with as an appropriate all-American substitute for our 47th state, New Mexico. Maybe just Mexico since New Mexico was a part of Mexico until we annexed it in 1848 after defeating Mexico in the Mexican-American War.

If we want to get serious about this renaming business, to deal with the Los Angeles problem I kind of like The Angels, California. Though the origin of California is itself problematic. It was called Las Californias before we annexed it. Sounds suspiciously Spanish, no?

Then if we want to go all the way, what's with the names New England and New York? Though they're in English, isn't the problem more that they are really English and not American?

If after the American (or whatever) Revolution, when we rid ourselves of English rule, we should have taken the opportunity to rename the northeast region of the new United States. New England could have become something benign like the Northeast. And New York could have been named something like Washington (no one had claimed that name yet) so as to cut our place name ties to the English Duke of York, who later became King James II.

You get the point.

But, indulge me, one more.

While the Mississippi legislature is contemplating what to call the Gulf of Mexico, they might turn some attention to the name of their own state--Mississippi--which was named by French (the French again) missionaries who used the Algonquian Indian name for "big river"--a compound of Ojibwa mshi, "big" and ziibi, "river."