Trump Orders U.S. Government to Rename Lake Ontario as ‘Lake America’ for Federal Use

President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the federal government to rename Lake Ontario as “Lake America” within 30 days for official U.S. use, issuing a directive that does not itself change the lake’s international name and that Canada has already rejected.

The White House posted the order Aug. 27 under the title “Honoring the American History of the Great Lakes and Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America.” The document is Executive Order 14420, shown as signed by Donald J. Trump and dated Aug. 27, 2026. In it, Trump wrote, “I am directing that the Lake officially be renamed as Lake America.”

The order directs the secretary of the Interior, working with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, to carry out the change within 30 days. It says Interior and the board must update the Geographic Names Information System, the federal government’s official names database, and remove federal references to “Lake Ontario” there. Trump wrote, “Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Interior ... shall ... take all appropriate actions to rename as ‘Lake America’ the body of water currently named as Lake Ontario... ”

That means the immediate practical effect is on federal maps, databases, regulations and agency documents. The Board on Geographic Names standardizes place names for the U.S. government under federal law, but a U.S. federal naming decision does not by itself require Canada, other countries or international bodies to adopt the same name. The order also does not alter the U.S.-Canada border, sovereignty or the lake’s binational status.

Lake Ontario is one of the Great Lakes shared by the United States and Canada, with the international border crossing the lake. It is bordered by Ontario to the north and west and New York to the south and east, giving the order immediate diplomatic significance in a way a purely domestic renaming would not.

Canada had already dismissed the proposal before Trump signed the order. Mélanie Joly, Canada’s industry minister, said: “We’ll always call it Lake Ontario. Period. We’re proud of our Great Lakes.”

The order frames the move as recognition of U.S. stewardship of the Great Lakes. “The United States is the greatest protector of the Great Lakes, including the body of water currently known as Lake Ontario,” the order says.

The renaming directive arrives during a broader trade fight between the two countries. According to contemporaneous reporting cited in the research, the United States recently imposed 50% tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian goods, and Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on about C$27.6 billion of U.S. goods scheduled to take effect Sept. 8.

Administratively, the order follows a pattern Trump established earlier in his second term. In Executive Order 14172, signed Jan. 20, 2025, he directed the federal renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” for U.S. government use. Federal databases and regulations were later updated to reflect that change, offering the clearest precedent for how the Lake Ontario order is likely to be carried out across the federal government.