Can Trump rename the Persian Gulf?

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump has floated changing the name of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Gulf ahead of a trip to the Middle East next week, a move that has infuriated Iran and its people.

“I’ll have to make a decision,” Mr Trump said in the Oval Office on May 7. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. I don’t know if feelings are going to be hurt.”

This past week, the Associated Press reported that Mr Trump planned to announce the renaming while on his tour of several Arab countries, which have been lobbying for the change for years.

The turquoise blue water has been called the Persian Gulf since at least 550BC, when the Persian dynasty of Cyrus the Great ruled an empire that spanned from India to the edges of Western Europe.

Ancient Persia is now modern-day Iran, and its entire southern coast stretches along the Persian Gulf.

Iran’s governments, going back to the pre-revolution era of the shah, have stoutly defended Persian Gulf as the only legitimate name. So have Iranians inside and outside the country, who view the name as a core part of their national and cultural identity.

By suggesting the name change, Mr Trump has seemingly done the impossible: unite Iranians of all political, ideological and religious factions. They have spoken out in statements and social media posts, condemning Mr Trump’s idea.

Can Trump really rename the Gulf?

Mr Trump has the power to order changes to geographical names as they are used in the US. But other countries do not have to honour those changes.

In 2025, he issued an executive order to update the government’s Geographic Names Information System in order to change all references to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Gulf of America.

On May 9, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government had

sued Google over its decision to abide by Mr Trump’s order.

The US Board on Geographic Names currently mandates the use of Persian Gulf for official US business.

Globally, the International Hydrographic Organisation works to standardise and chart marine boundaries. But the organisation told The New York Times in 2025 that there was “no formal international agreement or protocol in place for naming maritime areas”.

How have Iranians reacted?

Mr Trump’s idea drew condemnation from a broad cross-section of Iranians, who are often divided on many topics.

“It goes beyond politics; it goes beyond religious divisions and ideologies – it’s about the nation and its history, and it has hit a chord,” said historian Touraj Daryaee, director of the Centre for Persian Studies at the University of California, Irvine.

“Does Trump want to negotiate with Iran or does he want to take away its national identity?”

Mr Daryaee said that since ancient times, Iranians have referred to their nation as “ab o khakh”, which means “water and earth”.

Two bodies of water – the Persian Gulf in the south and the Caspian Sea to the north – are deeply intertwined in the Iranian psyche as symbols of nationhood.

Mr Ahmad Zeidabadi, a prominent analyst in Iran’s capital Tehran, posted on social media: “Just because of Trump’s wishes and whims, the Gulf of Mexico will not become the Gulf of America, Canada will not join the United States, Greenland will not become a possession of the United States, and the Persian Gulf will not take on a fake name.”

Iran’s national soccer team weighed in with a map of the Persian Gulf and a trending hashtag #ForeverPersianGulf on its official Instagram page.

Even Iranian opposition figures expressed their displeasure.

Mr Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah of Iran who supports Mr Trump and encouraged him to abandon diplomacy with the government in Tehran, said on social media: “President Trump’s reported decision to distort history, if true, is an insult to the Iranian people and our great civilisation.”

What’s the history of the Persian Gulf?

The Persian Gulf name has been used throughout history, in maps, documents and diplomacy, from the time of the ancient Persians, whose empire dominated the region, to the Greeks and the British.

The push to call it the Arabian Gulf gathered steam during the Pan-Arab nationalist movement of the late 1950s.

The UN uses the term Persian Gulf. A 2006 paper by a UN working group found unanimity in historical documents on the term, which it said was coined by Persian king Darioush in the fifth century BC.

Will this affect the Iran-US nuclear talks?

Iran and the US have held three rounds of negotiations, mediated by Oman, on Iran’s advancing nuclear programme, and they were

scheduled to meet again on May 11

.

The US wants to prevent Iran from weaponising its nuclear programme, and Iran wants to remove sanctions that have hobbled its economy.

Mr Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian senior diplomat and member of the country’s nuclear negotiating team in 2015, said if Mr Trump renamed the Persian Gulf, it would deliver a blow to the negotiations.

“It will just create mistrust and embolden the hardliners in Iran who say you can’t trust America,” Mr Mousavian said in an interview. NYTIMES