President Donald Trump said over the weekend that he is “thinking of” renaming either the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean, the latest in a series of moves by the president to rebrand major geographical features.
The president floated the idea during a rally in Tennessee on Saturday, where he talked about his previous efforts to rename Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico.
“So, we need a river, we need an ocean. So, I was thinking of either the Atlantic or the Pacific,” Trump told the crowd.
The president even offered up a couple of possible new names.
“We call it ‘Trump Ocean’ or ‘Ocean of the America,’ something like that,” he said.
The remarks build on a pattern of renaming efforts that the president has already put into action.
In late August, Trump signed an executive order formally changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” Lake Ontario shares its name with the Canadian province, and the move came amid trade tensions between the United States and Canada.
“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America,” Trump told reporters at the time.
The change drew a response from north of the border. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pushed back on the renaming, taking to social media to explain the history behind the lake’s Indigenous name.
“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,’” Carney wrote on X at the time.
The Lake Ontario order was not the first time the president had used his executive authority to give a well-known body of water a new name. Last year, Trump signed an executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
Now, with a lake and a gulf already renamed, the president has turned his attention to something even bigger. As Trump put it to the Tennessee crowd, the list still includes a river and an ocean.
The president did not commit to which ocean he would choose, saying only that he was considering either the Atlantic or the Pacific. He also left the final name open, offering “Trump Ocean” and “Ocean of the America” as options while adding “something like that.”
The comments at Saturday’s rally signal that the president’s push to put his stamp on the nation’s geography may not be finished. His previous renaming moves were carried out through executive orders, with the Lake Ontario change taking effect immediately.
The Lake Ontario decision in particular came against the backdrop of the trade tensions with Canada, and it prompted a public reply from Canada’s prime minister, who pointed to the Wendat origins of the name.
Whether the president moves forward with renaming one of the world’s oceans remains to be seen. For now, Trump has made clear that the idea is on his mind, telling rallygoers in Tennessee that he was thinking about the Atlantic or the Pacific as his next target.
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