US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, the BBC reports.
The extravagant order follows the collapse of talks on a US-Canada trade deal. The US has already imposed a 50% tariff on 20 billion dollars worth of Canadian goods. Canada will impose its tariffs on a dollar-for-dollar basis in September.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to rename the lake amid the trade dispute. Ontario is one of five Great Lakes that are shared by both countries. On the 27th of August, the US president said the decision was official and effective immediately, and that his administration had completed all the necessary paperwork to make the change.
The executive order says the U.S. Department of the Interior has 30 days to change the name of the lake on the official U.S. list of geographical names.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said
the name of Lake Ontario can be traced back at least 400 years, predating Canadian Confederation
and predating the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Carney said everyone knows the United States is changing: “Their trade relations, their foreign policy, their national monuments, their hydronyms. Canadian women and men also know that things must be called by their name, and this lake is called Lake Ontario – today and forever.”
When Trump returned to the White House in 2025, he signed a similar order, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, renaming it the Gulf of America. Mexico has rejected the name change, saying that a country cannot unilaterally change the name of a place in international waters. Trump’s order also led to a legal dispute between Mexico and tech giant Google, which began using the new name on its maps. Google Maps users in the United States see the name “Gulf of America,” while those in Mexico see “Gulf of Mexico.” Users in other countries see the double name “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).” After the order was approved, the White House barred Associated Press reporters from attending events related to the president because the news agency refused to use the name “Gulf of America.” The agency sued the Trump administration, and the lawsuit is still ongoing.
There is no single international organization responsible for naming bodies of water in international waters. While the U.S. president has broad authority to determine what geographical and other features are officially called in the country, other countries are not obligated to follow his decisions. Canada does not recognize changes to geographical names made by other countries, and officials have rejected Trump’s idea.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford wrote on social media that for Canadians,
it is Lake Ontario – for Canadians, for the rest of the world, now and always.
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston agreed, saying that the nonsense had begun.
The names of the four Great Lakes – Ontario, Huron, Michigan and Erie – come from indigenous languages, while Lake Superior comes from an Anglicized French name. Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes, and is located in both the Canadian province of Ontario and the state of New York.
Signing the order in the Oval Office, Trump said that it was not a direct message to Canada, but that the US’s northern neighbor has long been defrauding Americans on trade. He said that he had long thought about renaming the lake, and if you think about it, the US has both a bay and a lake. Now all it needs is an ocean, and maybe it could be renamed the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.
US Democratic politician Debbie Dingell from Michigan said that she would submit a bill to Congress to reverse the name change, and called Trump’s order idiotic. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that her state would not call the lake Lake America.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum praised the order, noting that the department had already started working on it.
Read also: US and Canada exchange new tariffs; countries are in a “trade war”
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