Canada’s prime minister moved quickly to swat down a new naming dispute on the Great Lakes, insisting Lake Ontario will keep its centuries-old name after US President Donald Trump said he was renaming it “Lake America.”
Lake Ontario is the smallest of the five Great Lakes by surface area, which borders Canada’s Ontario province and New York state.
“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,” Mr Carney said on X.
“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.”
Mr Trump signed an order in the White House, a step that lands as tensions climb in a spiraling trade war between the world’s largest economy and its northern neighbour.
“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
“The Canadian officials have treated us very badly. They’re nasty people.”
The announcement came as Canada’s top negotiator in US trade talks struck an upbeat tone about Washington’s stance on the French language and Canadian culture, while Ottawa separately moved to exempt seafood products from planned counter-tariffs.
US President Donald Trump signing the order to rename the lake
Mr Trump framed the order as the latest in a broader rebranding push he says he has been considering for some time.
“The lake change, Lake of America, was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, actually. As you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico, we changed it, and now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America,” Mr Trump said.
“So, if you think about it, 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.”
The latest flare-up follows a breakdown in US-Canada trade talks that collapsed at the eleventh hour last week, with Mr Trump’s tariffs taking effect on Saturday.
Canada answered with tit-for-tat tariffs on Tuesday, with its Prime Minister saying: “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.”
That same day, Mr Trump said he was giving “serious consideration” to the Lake America name.
He later posted a TikTok video late yesterday saying that he intended to do so after all.
The move echoes Mr Trump’s earlier decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in January 2025.
That change required the US federal government to use the new label, though Mexico has rejected the renaming and it does not carry international recognition.
Lake Ontario’s name is shared with the Canadian province, but the word itself traces back to the indigenous Huron term “Ontari’io,” meaning “great lake” or “beautiful water,” according to the National Museum of the Great Lakes.
Toronto, Canada’s largest city, sits on its northwestern shore.
In his second presidential term, Mr Trump has unsettled a number of allies with sweeping territorial claims, including the suggestion that Canada should become the 51st US state.
He has also asserted a claim to Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and spoken about making Venezuela a state after the US capture of its leader Nicolas Maduro.
In recent days, he has also said that he will make the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman a US territory, despite the fact that the war with Tehran remains ongoing.
