After Trump orders Denali renamed to Mount McKinley, a presidential descendant supports a compromise

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office to rename North America's tallest peak, known as Denali in Alaska, after President William McKinley, one descendant of the 25th president was beyond elated.

"He deserves to have the mountain named after him," Massee McKinley, a great-great nephew, said Thursday. "He had unparalleled integrity. People respected him."

But Trump's decision is being met with resistance, as many Alaska lawmakers, including its two Republican senators, have voiced opposition to the change. So Massee McKinley is backing a compromise: call it Mount McKinley, but keep Denali National Park and Preserve.

"The international community's always going to know the entire park and the mountain as Denali, and we don't dispute that," McKinley said. "But I definitely think from a national perspective, in the United States, we can have the compromise. I don't see a problem with that."

In fact, Trump's executive order proposes keeping the park's name: "The national park area surrounding Mount McKinley shall retain the name Denali National Park and Preserve."

The federal government officially recognized the mountain, which stands at a staggering 20,310 feet, as Mount McKinley in 1917. Before then, Indigenous groups had their own names for it, including Denali, or “the tall one," in the language of the Athabascan people.

The mountain was formally recognized as Denali in 2015 under the Obama administration.

Trump, during his first term, had suggested renaming it back to Mount McKinley. Alaska's two senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, were against it.

Their offices did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment, but both have reaffirmed that they disagree with Trump's executive order.

In a video post on X, Sullivan said: "I prefer the name Denali that was given to that great mountain by the great patriotic Koyukon Athabascan people thousands of years ago."

In 2017, Sullivan told Alaska Public Media that he had urged Trump during a conversation not to alter the name. He said he told him: "'Alaska Native people named that mountain over 10,000 years ago. And by the way, that was the Athabascan people, and my wife's Athabascan, and if you change that name back now she's gonna be really, really mad.' So he was like, 'All right, we won't do that.'"

But Trump said at campaign rallies that he would change Denali's name to recognize McKinley, who was president from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. McKinley's tenure was marked by his use of tariffs, which Trump has touted as a centerpiece of his economic plan.

McKinley, who was born in Ohio, had no actual connection with the mountain or Alaska. His name became associated with it after William Dickey, a gold prospector in the late 1800s who was fond of then President-elect McKinley, referred to the formation in a newspaper article as "Mount McKinley."

Over the decades, people in Alaska have called it both Denali and Mount McKinley, said Sondra Shaginoff-Stuart, an associate professor of Alaska Native studies at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

But its official name change to Denali held meaning, she added.

"The mountain is so majestic. The name is a statement of recognition of Native people in their native language," said Shaginoff-Stuart, a citizen of the Ahtna Dene and Pyramid Lake Paiute tribes. "Taking that away is yet another way to not recognize those people. Native people have lost their land and have lost their language, going back to the boarding schools and orphanages."

Massee McKinley, who is the vice president of the Society of Presidential Descendants, a membership organization, said Trump told him that he admires McKinley for his business acumen and wants to replicate that in office.

"I figured this would happen, and it did come to fruition," McKinley said. "I'd love to be a part of the signing process when they actually sign the proclamation for that."

Trump, in the same executive order, also said the Gulf of Mexico will be known as the Gulf of America. The U.S. Department of the Interior has 30 days to update the government's geographic names database.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com