The names of four of the Great Lakes – Ontario, Huron, Michigan and Erie – originate from indigenous words. Lake Superior was named after an anglicised French word. Lake Ontario, the smallest of the Great Lakes, borders both the Canadian province and the US state of New York.
Trump’s executive order gives the US Department of the Interior 30 days to update the name change with the Geographic Names Information Service – the official repository of domestic geographic names in the US.
When Trump entered the White House in 2025, he signed a similar order that changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Mexico has rejected the name change, arguing a single country cannot rename a shared body of international water.
It also led to a legal dispute between Mexico and tech giant Google, which renamed the gulf in its maps application.
In that case, Google Maps users in the US see “Gulf of America”, while those in Mexico see the “Gulf of Mexico”. Those in other countries see the “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)”.
