Pennsylvania state Rep. David Maloney, a Republican, is asking President Donald Trump to rename Lake Erie to “Lake Pennsylvania” following similar renaming efforts by the president.
Maloney is preparing a resolution calling on Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to take steps to rename Lake Erie to “Lake Pennsylvania,” arguing that the change is needed to reflect the lake’s modern identity.
“This is Pennsylvania’s only Great Lake. Its modern economy and identity are increasingly tied to the boaters, anglers, families and tourists who come to enjoy it,” Maloney said in a statement. “Ohio has plenty of shoreline. New York already has two Great Lakes. Canada has four others.”
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“Pennsylvania has one. Let’s call it Lake Pennsylvania!” he added.
Lake Erie is the smallest of the Great Lakes by volume as well as the shallowest, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The lake has about 12 million people in its watershed, with 10.5 million people in the U.S. and 1.9 million people in Canada.
This comes after Trump signed an executive order last month to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” a rebranding that Canada does not recognize and has firmly rejected.
“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,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement.
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The renaming only applies to the U.S. federal government, meaning Canada, other international bodies and U.S. states are not forced to acknowledge the change. But both Apple Maps and Google Maps changed the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for U.S. users following Trump’s executive order.
The president has also suggested renaming New Mexico to “New America,” prompting several of the state’s Democratic lawmakers to call on Apple and Google to publicly commit to keeping the state’s current name on their respective maps applications.
Trump has also floated the idea of renaming the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
On his first day back in office in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” but, similar to the Lake Ontario rebranding, the order only applies to the U.S. federal government and does not bind Mexico, other international bodies or private entities.
Apple Maps and Google Maps also adopted this change for users in the U.S., implementing the update using a region-based approach tailored to the location of the user’s device.
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