President Donald Trump on Thursday signed Executive Order 14420, titled
“Honoring the American History of the Great Lakes and Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America.”
In the order, Trump directs the Interior secretary to work with the Board on Geographic Names to “take all appropriate actions to rename as “Lake America” the body of water currently named as Lake Ontario, bounded on the south and east by the State of New York, and on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario.”
While the president has the authority to direct the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to rename the lake for federal governmental purposes, Canada, which shares the lake with the United States, can still call it Lake Ontario.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded with history lesson via X, formerly Twitter:
“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,” Carney wrote.
“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms,” Carney continued.
“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”
Trump’s executive order comes on the heels of a growing trade dispute between the United States and Canada.
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