U.S. President Donald Trump has floated renaming the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, following his earlier moves to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario.
At a midterm election rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, on the 10th, Trump said, "We have a gulf and we have a beautiful lake," referring to the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, which he renamed the Gulf of America and Lake America, respectively, according to The Washington Post.
He went on to say that someone had told him he also needed a river. "We need a river. We need an ocean," he said, suggesting it could be called "Trump Ocean" or "Ocean of the Americas." He added that he thought the country should have an ocean of its own before he leaves office, along with a fine river. The Post interpreted the remarks as signaling that Trump could change the name of either the Atlantic or the Pacific, and that he appeared to be joking about putting his own name in the new designation.
Trump signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America immediately after taking office early last year. The move triggered a diplomatic dispute with Mexico, and the White House barred an Associated Press reporter from covering events after the news agency kept using the Gulf of Mexico name. In August, he signed another executive order directing that Lake Ontario, which straddles the U.S.-Canada border, be renamed Lake America, in a move that provoked Canada.
U.S. presidents can use their executive authority to change the names of geographic features, including bodies of water. Private companies that provide online mapping services have generally accepted the names Trump has designated. Google said last year that it had changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America shortly after Trump's announcement, in line with its longstanding practice of following official government place names. Google uses names provided by the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) operated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). As a result, Google Maps users in the United States see the Gulf of America instead of the Gulf of Mexico. Users accessing the service from outside the United States and Mexico see "Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)."
This is not the first time Trump has made such claims. On the 7th of last month, he posted dozens of artificial intelligence-generated items involving territorial renaming and claims that other countries were U.S. territory. He posted several map images renaming the state of New Mexico "New America," as well as maps showing Canada, Greenland and Mexico all marked as U.S. territory. Other posts claimed the Strait of Hormuz as U.S. territory and included an image in which Iran's shape on a map of the Middle East was replaced with a profile of his own face.