US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday officially renaming Lake Ontario, a major body of water shared along the northern border with Canada, to “Lake America”.
“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario, effective immediately to Lake America. That’s going to take place right now as I sign the order,” Trump announced from the Oval Office prior to signing the directive. The president stated that the unilateral renaming was not intended to send a specific message, noting instead that he had been considering the decision “for a long time”. The formal action followed a video Trump shared a day earlier symbolically marking the change on a map amid ongoing cross-border trade friction.
The move drew immediate pushback from Ottawa, with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney confirming that Canada will not adopt the new designation. Carney emphasized that the historic name remains unchanged north of the border, highlighting its deep indigenous roots and long-standing geographic significance.
“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,” Carney stated in a post on X. He noted that the term originates from the Wendat word Ontari’io, meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”, and has been in continuous use for more than four centuries, predating both the United States Declaration of Independence and Canadian Confederation. — SPUTNIK
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