The Name Game: Mount Denali vs. Mount McKinley

How to Label Public Places

President Donald Trump renaming of North America’s highest mountain and its largest gulf outrages left-leaning activists, progressive professors, and the liberal press. Associated Press and New York Times initially refused to follow the president’s executive order.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Every_Road-_Denali_%287945497984%29.jpg

The dispute may strike some as laughable nonsense, but the choice of a proper noun for a significant place is no minor matter. In 1890 President Benjamin Harrison addressed the issue by creating an official board comprised of representatives from several federal agencies. Known today as the Board on Geographic Names (BGN), its depository contains over two-and-one-half million domestic and foreign names, including landmarks in remote corners of Antarctica and geographic features hidden beneath the surface of the oceans.

To resolve current disputes, I, with considerable help from BGN, propose four principles to guide the determination and revision of names for spaces and structures.

1. “Changes in existing names should not be made without good reason.” BGN explains why: They “are a valuable reflection of the history of our country..” They remind us of dramatic moments in our history (Independence Hall, Lafayette Square, Fort McHenry, Gettysburg National Cemetery) as well as “the rough and brawling nature of the environment that greeted the westward expansion.” Buoyant language uncharacteristic of bureaucratic boilerplate brings BGN to the conclusion: “Geographic naming gives us a clear, exciting profile of the United States that is unmatched in any other medium.”

Trump’s critics are thus right to question unnecessary renaming of peaks and gulfs, though one wonders about the consistency with which critics adhere to the historical preservation principle. When a number of Republican members of Congress objected to Barack Obama’s executive order giving Mount McKinley a new official name, the press expressed little sympathy for the dissenters. Associated Press adopted the name change without a murmur.

Liberals and progressives are serial name changers. The mayor of Washington D. C. altered the portion of 16^th Street running in front of the White House to Black Lives Matter Plaza. Campus protests provoked Princeton University into stripping the name of Woodrow Wilson, its former president, and the nation’s former president, from the façade of its public policy school. Yale re-titled a dormitory previously named Calhoun College. Stanford eviscerated Jordan from a classroom building in favor of Building 420. Trump’s actions would be reprehensible if he weren’t holding a crazy mirror to the actions of those who despise him.

2. Sovereigns name public places. In the United States dual sovereignty—the sharing of sovereign power between national and state governments, each within their constitutional defined sphere of authority—gives each level of government the capacity to name buildings and locations. Both Congress and the president (by executive order) may determine the label for spaces within National Parks, National Forests, National Cemeteries, and other jurisdictions under its control, including the territorial waters off the southeastern coast of the United States.

States name all other places, including their own. In 2020, Rhode Island voters deleted the last three words from their original name: “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” The federal government could neither compel nor prevent that action. Acknowledging state authority, BGN says that in the absence of state legislative action “local usage” should be decisive both for names and spelling, further cementing the responsibility for nomenclature to those for whom a place is near and dear. Trump can label the waters off the country’s southeastern coast the Gulf of America, but, given the design of the American federal system, the president can’t re-name Florida’s state parks or alter the moniker of sink holes outside Everglades National Park.

3. “One name for one geographic entity,” says BGN. If the same place is given multiple names, or the same name is given to multiple places, confusion is sown. “Standardization has become increasingly important during the last 100 years,” says BGN, because of “the development of natural sciences; sophisticated transportation and communication systems; . . . and highly accurate large-scale maps and charts.” That explains why only sovereigns have naming authority. If names were at the pleasure of newspapers, no one would be able to figure out where to go.

Unfortunately, my home university has yet to learn this fundamental principle. Harvard Corporation has sovereign rights to name buildings on its private land, but, unfortunately, it gives the same name, Littauer, to two buildings at opposite ends of the campus. Each year dozens of recently hired employees, newly arriving students, and naïve visitors exhaust themselves dashing across the campus to avoid missing critical appointments.

4, Two names be given to the same object when honoring different cultures with distinct languages. That principle was adopted in New Zealand when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 by the British Crown and representatives from the Maori communities. Today, the nation has two official names, Milford Sound and Piopiotahi. for the glorious fjord on the country’s southern island. Piopiotahi honors a bird of a now extinct species who flew there to grieve for Maui, the hero who died while attempting to win immortality for his people. A Welsh settler named the same body of water after an inlet on the coast of his home country. Official maps use both names. Citizens may choose between them.

If such a practice were adopted for significant places in the United States, Denali, “the high one,” would reminds us of the mountain’s significance across the millennia. McKinley can be used by those who wish to celebrate those who walked the Klondike trail in search of gold, a precious metal which maintained its value when McKinley kept the United States on the gold standard. Both traditions belong to the nation’s heritage.

The only-one-name policy, though basically sound, is not always appropriate. Hawaii conforms to BGN requirements by giving only one official name, usually an indigenous Hawaiian one, to a specific geographical location. But nicknames are prevalent within the tourist industry of the Aloha state. Hawaiian Lē‘ahi is known to tourists as Diamond Head. The practice gives rise to considerable confusion, as nicknames may not appear on official signage. In the Dolomites Italians address that problem by providing signage in three languages (Italian, German, and Ladin).

We do not need a battle over McKinley and Denali or in other instances where dual cultural traditions treasure the same geographical landmark. A national solution is not necessary if the land is within a state’s domain. Under these circumstances, each state may adjust in ways it deems appropriate. That, too, is a gift the federal system gives to the American republic.

Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University, director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, and senior editor of Education Next.