President-elect Donald Trump made some news earlier this week by suggesting he would rename the Gulf of Mexico and call it the Gulf of America.
It's an example of geography, politics and history colliding on a map. And it's not the only example.
A body of water separates the Korean peninsula and the main islands of Japan. What to call it has been the center of an international dispute that was first brought to the United Nations more than 30 years ago.
The most common name is the Sea of Japan. However, a growing number of maps also include the East Sea, which is what South Korea calls it.
According to historical documents, the first mapmaker to come up with the name Sea of Japan was a European — Matteo Ricci. He was an Italian Jesuit priest who worked in China and created a map of the world using Chinese characters in 1602.
South Korea's government says the name East Sea goes back some 2,000 years.
Fast forward to 1992, when South Korea and North Korea took the naming issue to the United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. However, there was no immediate decision.
The United States Board on Geographic Names and all U.S. government publications use Sea of Japan.
As for the UN, it says when countries “sharing a given geographical feature do not agree on a common name, it should be a general rule of cartography that the name used by each of the countries concerned will be accepted.” But not necessarily accepted by all.
