President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Thursday directing federal agencies to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America on US maps, documents and databases. The president acknowledged his authority extends only to US territory, as Canada shares jurisdiction over the body of water and controls naming conventions for its portion.
The action follows a similar order Trump signed earlier in his second term renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. At the signing, Trump suggested the administration might also rename the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, saying “maybe we’ll change them both.”
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the rename, stating on social media that the lake’s name derives from the Indigenous Wendat language and predates both Canadian Confederation and US independence. Provincial leaders and US governors bordering the lake also dismissed the move. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the state would not adopt the new name, while Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer referenced the educational acronym H-O-M-E-S used to teach schoolchildren about the Great Lakes. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers mocked the order by announcing a napkin-signed rename of Lake Michigan to Lake Wisconsin.
The renaming coincides with escalating US-Canada trade tensions. Trade negotiations between the countries collapsed over the weekend, prompting the Trump administration to impose 50 percent tariffs on several Canadian imports, with threatened additional duties on steel and automotive products. Canada responded with 25 to 50 percent tariffs on hundreds of US goods. Trump stated Canada should be treated differently than US states, referencing his previous suggestions that Canada become the 51st state—a proposal that has drawn strong rejection from Canadians. An administration official noted that most of Lake Ontario’s volume and its deepest sections lie within US territory.
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