U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday updating Lake Ontario’s name to “Lake America” for the U.S. geographic naming service amid an ongoing trade war with Canada.
In an X post at 1:26 p.m. on Thursday, the White House shared a map of the Great Lakes with Lake Ontario changed to “Lake America.”
The White House declared that the change is “effective immediately.”
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum vowed to move forward with the update.
“We’re on it, Mr. President! The places and waters that border our nation and support our economy should reflect the greatness of the United States,” he stated. “@USGS maps our country for the world to see, and we are PROUD to implement your Executive Order to rename LAKE AMERICA.”
Earlier in the day, Trump proclaimed, “all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence” to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”
The president posted an earlier video of himself on Instagram crossing out Lake Ontario on a map and replacing it with “Lake America” in black marker.
Mark Carney responds
Prime Minister Mark Carney posted a response on X, noting Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.”
“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 added.
Carney also referenced the trade war between the U.S. and Canada, accented by new U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods and Canadian counter-tariffs on U.S. products that are slated to take effect Sept. 8.
“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.”
Vermont Governor Phil Scott called the president’s executive order “petty and disappointing.”
“We should be at the negotiating table, finding a path forward that strengthens both the U.S. and Canadian economies,” he posted to X. “Further escalating tensions does nothing to help American or Canadian families and businesses.”
Trump posts video on World Lake Day
The president’s latest move to rename Lake Ontario comes on the same day as the global community recognizes World Lake Day, a day set aside by the United Nations to recognize fresh water resources and their importance to agriculture and industry.
How did we get here?
On Tuesday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that the U.S. is considering the name change “in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer.”
Later on Tuesday, the president posted an image of a map with Lake Ontario crossed out and replaced with “Lake America.”
Trump took the message a step further.
In a video posted on Truth Social on Thursday, the president declares, “So this is Lake Ontario, in Canada and in the United States. But we’re going to make a little change. We’re going to call it something different than Lake Ontario. We’re going to call it Lake America. And all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence.”
Trump also recalled his efforts to rename the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, which is now reflected on some maps and mobile apps.
“So now we have a lake and now we have a gulf,” Trump boasted in the video. “Because we have the Gulf of America and we now we have Lake America.”
‘How about Lake Epstein?’
While some commenters are supporting the president, including one who proclaimed “Lake America Great Again,” others are trolling the president, including one person who remarked, “How about Lake Epstein?”
How Trump can rename Lake Ontario
In the U.S., the U.S. Board on Geographic Names is the federal body that standardizes names for federal use. The organization, created in 1890, and established in its present form by public law in 1947, maintains uniform geographic name usage throughout the federal government.
For shared bodies of water such as the Great Lakes, naming conventions are embedded in cross-border treaties, federal laws and joint organizations, including the International Joint Commission.
In Canada, the Geographical Names Board of Canada works with provincial and territorial boards to regulate place names.
While Trump can sign executive orders to change the naming practices of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, Canada is not compelled to accept the new name, and the change could raise a standardization problem between Canada and the U.S.
A United Nations conference report from 1972 states that when countries sharing a given geographical feature and having different official languages do not succeed in agreeing on a common name form, it should be a general rule of international cartography that the name forms of each of the languages in question should be accepted.
“A policy of accepting only one or some of such name forms while excluding the rest on principle would be inconsistent as well as inexpedient in practice. Only technical reasons may sometimes make it necessary, especially in the case of small-scale maps, to dispense with the use of certain name forms belonging to one language or another.”
The document makes no mention of one jurisdiction renaming a shared geographical feature as a measure of economic belligerence, however.
Doug Ford responds to Lake Ontario renaming
Premier Doug Ford also chimed in, posting to X: “It’s Lake Ontario to Canadians and the rest of the world. Now and forever.”
In an interview with Bloomberg TV on Tuesday, Ford suggested Trump could rename the lake if he wants to, but Ontario would not accept the change.
“I know Canadians. We’re always going to call it Lake Ontario,” Ford said.
Ford also dismissed Trump’s earlier assertion that the U.S. won’t be doing much business with Ontario amid a broader trade war, noting millions of Americans depend on cross-border trade for their incomes.
“He’s saying he won’t do a lot of business with Ontario. Well, let me remind the president: nine million Americans wake up every single morning to produce a product, a widget or a service for Ontario.”
Why some maps show the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’
As mentioned earlier, Lake Ontario isn’t the first international body of water Trump has moved to rename.
Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly voted to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and the change was reflected on some versions of Google Maps.
In a blog post, Google noted the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) was officially updated from “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America.”
Google said the change was consistent with its “practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.”
Today, the semienclosed sea bordered by the United States, Mexico and Cuba is referenced differently on Google Maps, depending upon location.
People using the Google Maps app in the U.S. see “Gulf of America,” while users in Mexico see “Gulf of Mexico.”
App users in the rest of the world, including Canada, see the body of water labelled as “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).”