Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has rejected US President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”
Trump signed the order on Thursday amid an ongoing trade war between the US and Canada.
Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes and straddles the Canada-US border, with Ontario to its north and New York to its south.
The order said that with “the deepest parts of the Lake’s waters lying within United States territory, the United States claims most of the Lake’s volume”.
It added that the lake has “long been an integral asset to American exploration, settlement, commerce, and defense.”
In a statement countering the US order, Carney noted that the lake had its name before Canada and the US became states.
“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontario, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.'” 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,” Carney said.
“We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms.
“Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario—then, now, and always.”
Geographical names are not controlled by one worldwide authority. As such, it is uncertain whether Trump’s order will take effect outside the US.
