President Obama to restore Mt. McKinley's name to Denali on visit to Alaska (it's the highest mountain in North America, Denali is its native name, meaning "the High One.")
Apparently Alaska changed its name back to Denali officially decades ago, but politicians in Ohio have been blocking the federal government from doing the same ever since. Why Ohio? Because it's named after Ohio politician William McKinley when its discoverer found out he won the Republican nomination in 1896 (he went on to become President).
It was first "discovered" (as in seen by a white guy) by George Vancouver in the 1790s, but he failed to name it.
The Russians started out calling it Tenada (after Dengadha, the same word as Denali in a different Athabaskan language) in 1839 and later translated it as Bolshaya Gora (big mountain). After Anglophones arrived in larger numbers it was unofficially known as Densmore's Peak after some prospector named Frank Densmore in the 1890s, but it never caught on and Denali prevailed.
So most white Alaskans have used either Denali or a version of it ever since 1839, and called it Denali consistently since the gold rush era, while Mt. McKinley has always been a foreign name. Which makes Denali both the native and the paleface name.
If Denali was too "native" you should have done as the Ruskis and called it "Great Mountain" or "The High One" or something, or stayed with Densmore's Peak, since he at least climbed it, but you didn't, and Denali perservered, so Denali it is and Mt. McKinley belongs in the dustbin of history. If a name doesn't win after having the backing of the government for a 100 years, it is a loser name and doesn't deserve to survive.
