US President Donald Trump’s war on geography has opened a new front, this time at the Canadian border.
As trade tensions between Washington and Ottawa escalate, President Trump says he will rename a vast body of water shared by the United States and its northern neighbor.
We break down what President Trump announced, whether this particular body of water can actually be renamed, and whether the rest of the world will have to use the new name.
What did Trump do?
On Thursday, President Trump held a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House and signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to American Lakes.
Lake Ontario is located in North America, bordering the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and the American state of New York to the south.
The name “Lake Ontario” is thought to come from the Huron Wendat word “oniatarí:io,” which is thought to mean “lake of shining waters,” “great lake,” or “beautiful lake.”
“The name Ontario is a testament to the indigenous presence that predated the founding of the United States and Canada, and is critical to representing the depth of North American history to students and the broader community,” University of Tennessee geography professor Derek Alderman told Al Jazeera.
“President Trump’s executive order is a similar attempt to erase Indigenous cultures from the map, not just enforcing an ‘America First’ ideology across the continent, but a distinctly neocolonial geographic imagination in which maps and their names become tools for narrowing down whose histories and contributions matter.”
The lake’s name comes from the Canadian province of Ontario, which was established in 1867.
The French attempted to rename the body of water in the 17th and 18th centuries, but the name first appeared on maps in the 17th century as “Lake Ontario,” replacing earlier names honoring French officials and saints.
Why did Mr. Trump do this?
President Trump said the changes were “effective immediately,” claiming Canada “has been defrauding us for far too long” and linking it to trade tensions with Ottawa.
“They haven’t treated us well. Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They’re mean people,” Trump said.
“So lake change, American Lakes, is actually something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.”
However, the actual text of the executive order states that the Secretary of the Interior will spend the next 30 days working with the Geographical Names Board on the name change. Doug Burgum, who is not named in the executive order, is the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
The United States and Canada, which have had troubled economic relations since President Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2021, are currently embroiled in a new tariff war following failed trade negotiations.
President Trump last week imposed 50% tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. In retaliation, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to impose “dollar-for-dollar” tariffs on the United States starting September 8.
“I don’t expect the renaming of Lake Ontario to help (with) the trade war with Canada,” Alderman said.
“Given how much the American Lakes mandate has stirred up public opinion and fears about our defense posture in Canada, I believe this name change is likely to undermine the United States’ ability to negotiate because it is being done so suddenly, unilaterally and in a vitriolic manner by the president.”
How did Canada react?
Prime Minister Carney rejected President Trump’s order to rename the lake.
“This name is over 400 years old and predates the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States,” Carney wrote in an X post Thursday.
“Canadians also know that naming a reality meant calling it Lake Ontario then, now, and forevermore.”
“For Canadians and the rest of the world, it’s Lake Ontario. Now and forever,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford wrote to X.
Tim Houston, premier of Nova Scotia, Canada’s eastern coastal province, wrote to X: “We’re in some real stupidity right now. This is Lake Ontario, buddy.”
Are we against this in America?
Technically, President Trump can call the lake “America’s Lake” in the United States, but his order has met resistance there as well.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, declined to call the water facility proposed by President Trump by name. “New York will never call it that,” Hochul wrote in an X post in response to the White House’s announcement.
The councilor said: “An important caveat is that this change has no authority over how U.S. private entities (companies, nonprofits, news organizations) refer to the lake.
“Research has long shown that there can be a disconnect between new naming officially undertaken by leaders and the use and maintenance of old names by ordinary people and their communities. That dissonance and potential for disconnection can ultimately shape and actually weaken the power of the federal government,” he added.
Can President Trump really rename a lake?
He can do that, but he can’t force someone to use a new name.
There is no single international body that is binding to determine what all countries should call their shared waters.
Furthermore, there is no formal international law that universally specifies what common maritime space or disputed territory should be called.
However, the International Hydrographic Bureau (IHB), which guarantees the survey and mapping of all the world’s oceans, oceans, and other navigable waters, has standardized the names.
The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) provides nomenclature guidance and standardizes names, but does not mandate them.
The United States Board on Geographical Names oversees the country’s geographic nomenclature. The commission’s website states that “name changes are prohibited unless there is a compelling reason.”
The board reports to the Home Secretary and, in turn, to the ruling government.
“It’s not perfect, but it at least establishes institutional procedures for consideration, consultation, evidence gathering, and consideration of competing claims before a geographic name is changed,” the councilor said.
So, overall, there is no governing body that can prevent President Trump from renaming the lake, but there is also no governing body that can force other countries to use Trump’s newly assigned name for the lake.
“What we’re seeing right now, even with[President Trump’s]previous renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, is a unilateral naming, by decree or angry whim, with no public discussion or real government consideration of the impacts or consequences. The cost at stake with this Lake Ontario renaming is another loss of the democratic process in the United States,” Alderman added.
For example, Canada has announced that it will continue to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake Ontario.
“He can do what he wants within the legal confines. That said, it will be challenged and it’s a transboundary body of water so he doesn’t have to defer to other jurisdictions. Ontario and Canada definitely won’t do that,” Professor Gail Kranzberg of Canada’s McMaster University told Al Jazeera.
“Federal agencies will need to change their maps. Canadians reject the name. Remember that Ontario, which comes from the Wendat word Ontario, has remained unchanged for centuries in Canadian and international usage,” added Kranzberg, who has expertise in public policy, the Great Lakes, and water resource management and governance.
Have there been conflicts over the names of bodies of water in other countries?
Diplomatic tensions between neighboring countries have led to long-running disputes over the naming of maritime spaces.
Japan and South Korea have been at loggerheads over what to call the ocean between them. Tokyo calls it the Sea of Japan, but South Korea insists on calling it the East Sea.
The name of the South China Sea is also disputed. The Philippines insists that part of it should be called the West Philippine Sea, while Vietnam prefers the East Sea.
What Iran calls the Persian Gulf is known by Arab countries as the Arabian Gulf.
Has President Trump renamed other places?
yes. Last January, he issued an executive order renaming Alaska’s Mount Denali Mount McKinley in honor of former Republican President William McKinley, who served as president from 1897 to 1901.
The peak was named Mount McKinley in 1896, but Alaska Natives had long called it Denali, meaning “high one.” In 1975, the state of Alaska officially renamed the mountain Denali and began lobbying the federal government for a similar name. The mountain’s name was changed from McKinley to Denali in 2015 by former Democratic President Barack Obama.
Also last January, President Trump signed another executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. This angered Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
The Gulf of Mexico borders Cuba, the eastern states of Mexico, and the U.S. Gulf Coast states.
The name Gulf of Mexico is about 400 years old. British geographer Richard Hakluyt referred to this body of water as the “Gulf of Mexico” in his 1589 book, The Principal Voyages, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English People. In Mexico, this bay is also known by its Spanish name “El Golfo de Mexico”.
Will international organizations and mapping agencies follow President Trump’s orders?
Just as other countries are under no obligation to adopt President Trump’s preferred name, neither are international organizations.
For example, the United Nations continues to use established names for disputed waters such as the Gulf of Mexico.
In Google Maps, the name of a particular place is visible to different people.
In January, Google announced that it would change the name of its online mapping platform Google Maps for users in the United States, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and Mount Denali to Mount McKinley. For users in other countries, the Gulf is labeled “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).”
“If the official name varies by country, Maps users will see that country’s official name. Everyone in other parts of the world will see both names, and that’s the same here,” Google said in an X post at the time.
This is Google’s standard strategy when dealing with geographical sites with disputed names.
Japan calls the sea that connects Japan and the Korean Peninsula the Sea of Japan, and both North and South Korea call it the East Sea.
If you’re in Japan, Google Maps will show you the Sea of Japan. In South Korea, it appears as Donghae. Outside of Japan and Korea, it will be displayed as “Sea of Japan (East Sea)”.
“As a university educator, I am concerned about what widespread educational and psychological deficiencies will be inherited into the American classrooms required to use American Lakes (and American Gulf),” the councilman said.
“These classrooms risk conveying a myopic sense of place that dilutes the history of indigenous peoples and the deep connections that the United States has with Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The cost of the executive order is to foster a fuller understanding of the planet, not just preserving old names.”
