Trump Renames Lake Ontario “Lake America.” Canada Says It Stays Ontario

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America for official U.S. government use. He signed it in the Oval Office with a large map behind him already labeled “Lake America” and the slogan “Making the Great Lakes Even Greater.”

“This is official, effective immediately,” Trump said after signing. He added that the White House had “filed all the necessary papers” and notified everyone it needed to notify.

The order comes in the middle of a trade fight with Canada. After talks collapsed last week, the United States imposed 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian goods. Ottawa has promised matching tariffs next month.

Asked what message he was sending Canada, Trump said, “No message. As you know, Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade. They don’t pay for anything, and they want to be treated like a state, but they’re not a state.”

The order itself argues that the deepest parts of the lake sit in U.S. waters and that the United States “claims most of the Lake’s volume.” It also calls the lake “an integral asset to American exploration, settlement, commerce, and defense.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names have 30 days to update the official Geographic Names Information System. The U.S. Geological Survey said later Thursday that electronic federal documents already reflect the new name.

That change only binds the U.S. government. It does not force Canada, New York, mapmakers, or anyone else to follow it.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney answered within hours. “The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, 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,” he wrote.

“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.”

Industry Minister Mélanie Joly had already drawn a line earlier in the week: “We’ll always call it Lake Ontario. Period. We’re proud of our Great Lakes.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul was just as blunt. “New York won’t be calling it that.”

Canadian maritime attorney Marc Isaacs put it simply: the Americans can call it whatever they want. It is still Lake Ontario.

The name is not a Canadian invention. European maps used versions of it in the 1600s. The province of Ontario was later named after the lake, not the other way around. Surface area is split almost down the middle, with a slight majority on the Canadian side. Volume is a different argument because the U.S. side is deeper.

Trump compared the move to last year’s order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Google and Apple followed that one for U.S. users. Most of the world did not.

Then he floated a bigger idea. “If you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake. Now all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.”

For now, U.S. federal maps, contracts, and databases will say Lake America. Canada, New York, and most everyone else will keep saying Lake Ontario.