By Alok Mukherjee
On August 27, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to rename Lake Ontario—an international body of water shared between Canada and the United States—to “Lake America”. The directive followed a breakdown in bilateral trade negotiations and the recall of Canadian negotiators from Washington by Prime Minister Mark Carney. Taking umbrage at sharp criticisms from Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Trump reverted to a familiar play: weaponizing geography to settle a political score, much as he previously attempted when declaring the Gulf of Mexico to be the “Gulf of America”.
Map posted on Truth Social depicting Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”
The threat to alter a 400-year-old name brings to mind one of the most widely quoted passages in world literature. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene 2), Juliet famously asks:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.”
Juliet’s logic holds within her context: Romeo’s character is independent of his family’s title and their deadly feud with her own family. Over time, however, her musings have been generalized into a virtually universal claim that names do not matter.
But can Juliet’s romantic abstraction apply to political power moves, trade disputes, and imperial land grabs? Does it matter when a U.S. President posts a fabricated map on Truth Social rebranding shared international waters, or attempts to slap his own name onto public cultural institutions like New York’s Kennedy Center?
Names are not arbitrary labels; they carry history, legal standing, and cultural memory. And while there may be some instances in which a change may be justified and called for, this cannot be a universal rule. Inserting one’s name onto domestic landmarks like New York’s Kennedy Center is ego-driven but at least requires statutory authority. Unilaterally renaming international waters like Lake Ontario, the Gulf of Mexico, or the Strait of Hormuz is a far darker enterprise. It touches directly on geography, history, power, and national identity.
The Imperialist Lineage: From Monroe to McKinley to Trump
Trump’s impulse to rewrite maps is not occurring in a historical vacuum. It places him squarely in an imperialist-supremacist lineage of American leaders who viewed geography as a canvas for dominance.
Consider his administration’s active revival of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine—an ethos that historically framed the Western Hemisphere as an exclusive American backyard for intervention and occupation. Or look to his immediate executive crusade to strip Denali—the millennia-old Athabaskan name meaning “the high one”—back to Mount McKinley. William McKinley was the architect of American overseas empire, leading the military invasion and subjugation of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, and presiding over the illegal annexation of Hawaii.
By resurrecting names associated with expansionists, occupiers, and white supremacists, Trump signals his alignment with an imperial past. Renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America” or the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” is not just petulance; it is an ideological assertion of hegemony, treating sovereign neighbors and shared international resources as mere territories subject to American decree.
The Laziness of Imperial Metonymy
Let us start with the laziness of imperial metonymy. Treating “America” as synonymous exclusively with the United States is a lazy, chauvinistic habit. The term refers to an entire hemisphere spanning North, Central, South America and parts of the Caribbean. Rebranding a binational border lake as “Lake America” asserts an absurd claim of unilateral ownership over shared international space. If strict national alignment were the goal, “Lake USA” would be more accurate—unwieldy as it sounds.
Pique, Erasure, and Settler-Colonial Mindsets
Beyond the linguistic arrogance, this decree displays a profound contempt for First Nations history. Unlike the term “America,” which is derived from the name of an Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, the name Ontario is over 400 years old, originating from the Wendat word Ontari’io, meaning “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”. It predates both Canadian Confederation and the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Post by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney on X:
@MarkJCarney
“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. 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.”
Erasing a Wendat hydronym fits seamlessly into a broader political project: the systematic dismantling of DEI initiatives, the erasure of Indigenous history in curricula, and the reassertion of a settler-supremacist mindset that treats original names and cultures as entirely disposable. This disrespect reflects a systemic failure in public education and discourse across North America, where settler-colonial realities are being routinely suppressed.
Administrative Chaos and Fiscal Self-Indulgence
Trump’s executive vanity will also introduce sheer administrative chaos. Canada and the rest of the world will continue referring to this body of water as Lake Ontario. While private tech platforms like Google Maps may cave to Washington’s pressure within U.S. borders, the rest of the globe will not. The result will be a fragmented cartographic reality where a single body of water carries two conflicting official names depending on which side of the border you stand.
Furthermore, it is a glaringly irresponsible act of fiscal self-indulgence that serves no real purpose in terms of the real issue—a trade deal between the US and Canada. Mandating that every U.S. federal agency, military map, official database, and maritime chart be reprinted and re-coded—all to appease the President’s pique—wastes millions in public resources.
Renaming Lake Ontario will do nothing to resolve complex trade disputes, repair cross-border supply chains, or fix the fallout from tearing up the USMCA. It is a reckless distraction that poisons diplomatic goodwill, deepens divides, and wastes taxpayer funds.
The musings of Shakespeare’s Juliet do not apply to public geography. Names matter. Lake Ontario was Ontari’io long before this executive decree, and it remains Lake Ontario today—and long after Donald J. Trump is gone.
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