Last week I asked a colleague, chuckling over her phone, what she was laughing at. The answer, a red line around a big swathe of the Mediterranean stretching from Libya to Greece in the East and Tunisia to Sicily in the west. This highlighted body of water was now, apparently, the new Gulf of Malta. Drawn by Lawrence Renes within these shores, it seemed too good not to share!
What do you think? After all, if Donald Trump can rename 620,000 square miles of ocean on a whim, why can’t we? (Before you call in the international waters experts and a maritime lawyer, I’m not serious.)
In case you missed it, a month ago Trump unilaterally declared that a vast body of water, known for centuries as the Gulf of Mexico should henceforth be referred to as the ‘Gulf of America’.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, major companies including BP, Chevron and Shell moved swiftly to align with the presidential decree. Other corporations who appear to have adopted the new name include Google, Microsoft (Bing) and Apple highlighting the influence of the Trump administration on businesses in the US and thus on the rest of us.
Does it matter? As William Shakespeare’s commonly reminds us in every production of Romeo and Juliet on every school stage, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. The rose – or person, its characteristics and its value are a constant whatever it is called. A name is a mere label.
But is this true? While the essence of a rose remains unchanged, history shows us that names, labels and monikers, good and bad, determine how we view objects, people and places. In medieval Europe, the rose itself was a powerful emblem, symbolising love, beauty and political power, as seen in the Wars of the Roses, a series of fifteenth century civil wars in England fought between two rival Houses of the royal family.
Or think of Chanel no. 5, a ‘modern, fresh and vibrant embodiment of the now and forever scent’ which beyond its ‘dynamic crisp top notes of lemon, mandarin and orange’, ‘unfolds with rose’ and other floral notes. Would it evoke such classic sophistication if it was called Scent no. 113? No! The name, and its association with luxury and high-society elegance, has been built over 100 years.
Likewise, the term The Gulf of Mexico comes with a backstory. In the sixteenth century, Hernán Cortés landed on the Yucatán Peninsula at the southern tip of North America. A Spanish conquistador, he overthrew the Aztec empire and won Mexico for the crown of Spain. Because of the importance of the adjacent sea to their trade routes, Spanish cartographers began referring to this body of water as the Seno Mexicano or Gulf of Mexico.
Trump’s effort at renaming is simply another form of imperialism, verbal imperialism with which he is signalling his political power over Mexico and beyond. This is also an uncomfortable reminder of the widespread cultural erasure that accompanied much of the colonisation of the New World with the replacement of places’ original names with European designations. If the Gulf’s title is due an update, surely we should be reverting to something more indigenous?
Trump, however, is determined to stick to his guns, and journalists who aren’t complying with Trump’s demands are now being excluded from White House press conferences and other presidential events. The Associated Press agency argues this infringes the First Amendment of the US constitution that protects freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly.
Interestingly, Theodore Browning, a young researcher at King’s College, University of London, pointed out to me last week a quote from Isaiah Thomas, printer of the Massachusetts Spy, 1788:
Heaven grant that the Freedom of the Press, on which depends the Freedom of the People, may, in the United States, be ever guarded with a watchful eye, and defended from Shackles, of every form and shape, until the trump of the celestial Messenger shall announce the final dissolution of all things.’ (The documentary history of the ratification of the Constitution Volume V; p 641, footnote 4.)
Is Donald the Trump to which he refers?
And should we perhaps be grateful that we don’t yet have city on the East Coast of American called New Trump (or Trumpingrad), given that Rome, Washington DC and Valletta are named for people. (I hope Trump doesn’t read this and get ideas.)
Back in Europe, despite its diminutive size, for centuries Malta has been of strategic importance in the control of crucial Mediterranean trade routes, as well as during times of war. Now, its own master for more than sixty years, perhaps it’s time to signal this with a linguistic (and oxymoronic) land grab of international waters?
Move aside ‘Mediterranean’. Long live The Gulf of Malta.
