Canada should sabotage Trump’s “Lake America” by renaming Lake Erie “Lake America” too, making the name useless for communication

Discussion

Now that Trump has renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” for U.S. federal purposes, Canada should rename Lake Erie “Lake America” too.

The point would be deliberate ambiguity. Whenever someone mentions “Lake America,” you would have to ask whether they mean Lake Ontario under U.S. terminology or Lake Erie under Canadian terminology.

That makes the new name bad at its most basic job: identifying a place.

Canada can’t stop the U.S. from using the name, but it can make it inconvenient enough that everyone else keeps saying “Lake Ontario” and “Lake Erie.”

What do you think of this idea?

Posted Aug 31, 2026, 2:34 AM UTC

268
Loading comments…