US President Donald Trump has signed an government order in search of to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America.
The transfer comes after commerce talks between the US and Canada collapsed late last week, and the US imposed new 50% tariffs on $20bn (C$28bn) price of Canadian items. Canada will implement “dollar for dollar” counter tariffs next month.
Trump has repeatedly posted threats about renaming the lake, one of the 5 Great Lakes that straddle both international locations, on social media amid the commerce dispute.
He said on Thursday the transfer was “official, effective immediately” and that his administration has “filed all the necessary papers, documents” to make the change.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney famous the identify Lake Ontario can be traced back more than 400 years, noting in a social media post on Thursday that preceded the formation of the Canadian Confederation and the US Declaration of Independence.
“We know that the United States is changing. Their trade relations, their foreign policy, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” he wrote. “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 took the White House in 2025, he signed a comparable order that modified the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Mexico has rejected the identify change, arguing a single nation can’t rename a shared physique of worldwide water.
It also led to a dispute between Mexico and tech giant Google, which renamed the gulf in its maps software. , exterior
In that case, Google Maps customers in the US see “Gulf of America”, while those in Mexico see the “Gulf of Mexico”. Those in other international locations see the “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”.
There is no universally acknowledged worldwide physique setting the names of worldwide waters. While the US president has broad discretion over how his nation formally recognises landmarks, other international locations do not have to observe.
Trump’s newest order directs the US Department of the Interior to replace the Geographic Names Information Service – the official repository of home geographic names in the US – to mirror the identify change, the president said.
Canada, however, does not have to recognise identify adjustments made by other international locations and officers dismissed the concept in remarks earlier this week.
“We’ll always call it Lake Ontario,” said Industry Minister Melanie Joly on Tuesday.
The names of 4 of the Great Lakes – Ontario, Huron, Michigan and Erie – originate from indigenous phrases. Lake Superior was named after an anglicised French phrase. Lake Ontario, the smallest of the Great Lakes, borders both the Canadian province and the US state of New York.
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