PRESIDENT Donald Trump said he had considered renaming the Atlantic Ocean but dropped the idea after Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned that the move could upset several countries.
Addressing a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday (21), Trump appeared to suggest that his decision to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America had prompted him to consider renaming the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean.
“Recently, I changed the name of a lake … you know the lake. But I did it very lightly. And the damn thing got changed, actually. That’s power, right? When you sort of do it half-heartedly, and it gets changed, it’s changed.
It’s called the Lake of America,” he said.
Trump said he had discussed his idea of renaming the Atlantic Ocean with Pichai.
“I spoke to a brilliant guy, Sundar. He heads all of Google. He’s a brilliant guy. Sergei and Sundar. Totally brilliant guys,” he said, referring to Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
“And, you know, they’re still rattled from the Gulf. And I said, ‘Sundar, I’m thinking of the Atlantic Ocean. Can you handle it?’” Trump told the gathering.
Recounting Pichai’s response, Trump said the Google CEO had told him that oceans were different because they bordered many countries and had suggested dropping the idea.
“So, I’ll probably pass it,” Trump said.
During his address, he also floated the idea of renaming rivers such as the Hudson and Mississippi after America.
“So, we have a lake, and we have a Gulf. Now we need a river and we need an ocean. So, I was thinking of the Hudson River, and I thought of the Mississippi,” Trump said.
He added that he would not pursue renaming the rivers.
On Monday (19), Trump called for New Mexico to be renamed, arguing in a Truth Social post that the state was part of the United States, not Mexico. “We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America!” he wrote.
His latest suggestion came a little over a month after he shared maps on social media depicting New Mexico as “New America.” The name New Mexico dates back to the 1500s, when Spanish settlers called the region Nuevo México. It therefore predates both the United States and modern-day Mexico as independent countries. New Mexico was a US territory before becoming the 47th state in 1912.
