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How we label or categorize depends upon our purpose, our projections, and our evaluations; yet the thing labeled does not change just because we change the label or category.1
Words do not have "one true meaning." Words mean different things to different people; words mean different things at different times; words mean different things in different contexts.2
Mapping the Persian Gulf Naming Dispute
On nearly all maps published before 1960, and in most modern-day international treaties, proceedings, and maps, the roughly 600-mile-long body of water located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula is identified by the name Persian Gulf. This mirrors conventional practice dating back to firstcentury ancient Greek geographers. But with the rise of Arab nationalism in the 1960s, a number of Arab countries adopted widespread use of the term Arab Gulfor Arabian Gulf to refer to this inland sea. Other entities have followed this usage, some of them coming up with additional names, and the result has been a highly contentious dispute over nomenclature involving individuals, nations, global agencies, corporations, universities, and mapmakers.
Some Historical Background on the Persian Gulf Naming Dispute
The phrase "Arabian Gulf (Sinus Arabiens) was once used to refer to what is now called the Red Sea. European mapmakers, following the ancient Greek geographers Strabo and Ptolemy among others, went along this usage. Strabo and Ptolemy also utilized the expression Sinus Persicus to specify the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and the Iranian Plateaus. Early Roman historians, in keeping with the traditions of the ancient Greeks, called the waterway "Aquarius Persico."
Persian Muslim geographers, in the early Islamic era and employing Arabic, likewise used the term Persian Sea or Persian Gulf. Most European cartographers, utilizing languages spoken in European countries, have also made use of the name Persian Gulf on their maps.
In 1534, Baghdad was seized by the Ottoman Empire, which gave Turkey access to the port of Basra at the head of the gulf. This event overlapped the early mapmaking efforts of Gerardus Mercator, whose 1541 world globe named the gulf Sinus Persicus, nunc Mare de Balsera ("Persian Gulf, now Sea of Basra").3 On his terrestrial map of 1569, the name was changed to Mare di Mesendin (after the Ra's Musandam "the mountaintops," in modern-day...