Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America
President Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America.
Lake Ontario will soon be known as Lake America, at least in the United States, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to rename the body of water sitting between the United States and Canada.
Trump’s order, which he signed in the Oval Office on Aug. 27, instructs the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to formalize the change within 30 days. As he signed the order, Trump compared the move to his action last year to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“If you think about it, we have a gulf, and we have a lake, now all we need is an ocean,” Trump said. “So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.”
The move comes amid a rapidly escalating trade war with Canada, with Trump threatening the action for days.
Here’s what to know about Lake Ontario, the easternmost of the Great Lakes, one of the world’s largest surface freshwater ecosystems.
Can Trump legally change the name of Lake Ontario?
While Trump can legally change the way the United States refers to geographic landmarks through an executive order, it does not apply internationally, especially to a shared body of water, and there is no governing body that can force other countries to use the new name.
In the case of Lake Ontario, the water body is jointly controlled by the United States and Canada under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, enacted to prevent and settle disputes over the use of the shared waters. Because of this, Trump’s executive order will apply to official federal government documents and maps, based on a statute that mandates uniformity in geographic nomenclature and orthography.
There is no single, binding international authority that determines what every country must call a shared body of water, Al-Jazeera reported, but multiple international bodies such as the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names help mediate discrepancies.
“As fundamental to the need for global standardization of geographical names, UNGEGN promotes the recording of locally-used names reflecting the languages and traditions of a country,” the organization says on its website. “…Geographers, linguists, cartographers and planners are among those specialists who develop the tools, harness the technology, provide the outreach, and share the belief that accurate and consistent use of a common framework of geographical names can offer considerable benefits to the world.”
Where is Lake Ontario?
The smallest of the five Great Lakes, by surface area, Lake Ontario sits on the border between the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and New York to the south.
The lake is also the second-smallest Great Lake by volume, holding about 393 cubic miles of water, according to the National Museum of the Great Lakes.
The lake, formed thousands of years ago as glaciers carved the Great Lakes basin during the last ice age, is a well-known destination for boating, fishing, birdwatching and swimming, with parks and beaches along its shores on both sides of the border.
Why did Trump rename Lake Ontario to Lake America?
Trump’s renaming of the lake follows his sweeping 50% tariffs slapped on many goods from Canada after trade negotiations between the two countries fell apart last week, USA TODAY previously reported. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney countered by hitting U.S. exports with tariffs ranging from 15% to 50%. Trump has threatened to also double tariffs on automobiles and auto parts from Canada from 25% to 50%.
“The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They’re nasty people,” Trump said, accusing Canada of imposing enormous tariffs on products from American farmers.
Although Lake Ontario forms the shoreline of Toronto, Canada’s largest city, White House staff secretary Ben Moss said most of the lake’s volume, including its deepest parts, is in U.S. territory.
“This will reflect that this is an American lake,” Moss said.
Canada rejects name change
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, in a statement following Trump’s order, said the lake’s name for Canadians will always remain Lake Ontario.
“The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America,” Carney said. “We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always.”
Lake Ontario’s name dates back to the 17th century and comes from the native Iroquois tribe’s word “Ontarí’io,” meaning “lake of shining waters,” per the Center for Great Lakes Literacy. The name began appearing on European explorers’ maps in the 1660s.
Before Trump signed the executive order, Canada’s minister of industry, Mélanie Joly, rejected the proposal to change the lake’s name on Aug. 25, saying, “We’ll always call it Lake Ontario. Period,” to applause.
Will Lake Ontario’s name change on Google Maps?
After the Gulf of Mexico was officially renamed Gulf of America in the United States, Google in a statement, said that it would be complying with the name change as part of a long-standing practice of adhering to official government names.,
“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google said.
The Geographic Names Information System, which is under the United States Geological Survey, provides the names used in Google Maps.
However, the name change applies to the United States, and Google, in its statement, said that, depending on regions, both “applicable names will be shown,” USA TODAY previously reported.
“When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name,” Google said. “Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.”
An example of this practice is the Sea of Japan, or the East Sea, a name disputed between Japan and South Korea. In Google Maps in the United States, the sea is designated as the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
By Google adhering to the Geographic Names Information System, Lake Ontario will likely appear as Lake America for U.S. residents on Google Maps. USA TODAY contacted Google regarding the name change on Aug. 27, but has not received a response.
Not the first time Trump changed a name
Last year, Trump rebranded the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America through an executive order, saying the name had a “beautiful ring.” The international community, including Mexico, however, still refers to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump also renamed the Department of Defense to the “Department of War” through an executive order, saying it had a “stronger sound.” The agency was last called the “Department of War” in 1947, when it was changed during a Cabinet reorganization under President Harry Truman after World War II.
“It used to be called the Department of War, and it had a stronger sound,” Trump said at the time about the rebrand. “And as you know, we won World War I, we won World War II. We won everything.”
The Trump administration also changed the name of the tallest mountain in North America from Mount Denali to Mount McKinley. Alaska officials long called the mountain Denali; however, federal officials did not use that name until President Barack Obama aligned it in 2015.
Contributing: Joey Garrison, Kinsey Crowley, Fernando Cervantes Jr. / USA TODAY
Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at sshafiq@usatodayco.com and follow her on X and Instagram @saman_shafiq7.