US President Donald Trump has ordered Lake Ontario to be referred to as “Lake America”, adding a fresh point of tension to already strained relations between the United States and Canada.
Trump announced the change while signing an executive order at the White House. "We're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America," he said.
The lake, which sits along the US-Canada border, has been known as Lake Ontario for centuries. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has rejected Trump's move, insisting that its name will remain unchanged in Canada.
Carney rejects Trump’s move
Carney pointed to the lake's long history, saying its name predates both the United States and Canada by hundreds of years. He said the name comes from an Indigenous word meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.”
“America is changing,” Carney said in a post on X, while stressing that Canadians would continue to call it “Lake Ontario -- then, now and always.”
The dispute comes as Washington and Ottawa remain locked in a trade battle. The US has imposed 50 per cent tariffs on Canadian products worth USD 20 billion after trade negotiations failed to produce an agreement.
Carney has vowed to respond with matching measures, saying he would impose tariffs "dollar for dollar."
Why Trump wants the new name
Trump's order instructs the US Department of the Interior to update references to the lake in the official geographical naming service within 30 days. It also directs federal agencies to use “Lake America” when referring to the body of water.
The order cites the lake's deepest point being on the American side and argues that the US consequently “claims most of the Lake’s volume.”
Trump said he had been considering the change “for a long time.” He also suggested that other geographical names could be reconsidered, saying, “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,” he said.