Donald Trump launched a new proposal for a geographical renaming this Saturday: during a rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, he suggested renaming the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean as "Trump Ocean" or "the Ocean of the Americas," in a joking tone amid the laughter and applause of the attending audience.
"We need a river and we need an ocean. So I've been thinking about the Atlantic or the Pacific. We'll call it Trump Ocean or Ocean of the Americas," declared the leader, according to the agency EFE.
The occurrence was not accompanied by any executive order or formal administrative procedure, but it did come with a justification: Trump argued that the United States needs an ocean and a major river named after it, in direct reference to the geographical renaming initiatives he has promoted since the beginning of his second term.
Before I leave, I think we should have an ocean. And we need a great river, he added.
In the same event, Trump dismissed the idea of changing the name of the Hudson River—which runs through New York and is named after the explorer Henry Hudson—with a remark that drew laughter: “He did a good job creating that mess a long time ago.” He also rejected renaming the Mississippi River.
«He could say the stupidest things and you would applaud», the leader also said at the rally held this Saturday at the F&M Bank Arena.
The proposal for the ocean is part of a systematic pattern of renaming that Trump has promoted since January 2025. The first and most notable was that of the Gulf of Mexico, which was renamed "Gulf of America" through an executive order on January 20, 2025, his first day in office.
Trump revealed that he had considered naming it "Trump Gulf", but he dismissed the idea because, in his own words, "it wouldn't look very good."
The second formal change occurred on August 27, 2026, when Trump signed an executive order to rename Lake Ontario as "Lake America", a body of water shared with Canada.
The Canadian response was emphatic: Prime Minister Mark Carney stated that Canadians will continue to call it "Lake Ontario now and always," while Ontario Premier Doug Ford erected a giant sign on the Canadian shore with the message "Lake Ontario. Now and Always." The Premier of Nova Scotia, Tim Houston, described the decision as "sheer nonsense."
Among the suggested changes —without executive backing— are also renaming the state of New Mexico to "New America", a proposal that Trump himself acknowledged would require public consultation and a state constitutional amendment, and turning the Strait of Hormuz into the "Trump Strait", introduced in early September.
International reactions to this policy have been widely negative. The Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum mocked the possibility of referring to the United States as “Mexican America” following the change in the Gulf.
No international organization has adopted any of the new names promoted by Trump. Google and Apple used "Gulf of America" only for users within the United States, while retaining "Gulf of Mexico" for the rest of the world.
The U.S. president has the authority to order changes to the names used by federal agencies, but this power does not extend to other countries, the states of the Union, or international organizations, making these name changes gestures of internal administrative significance, no matter how much they generate headlines across the "Trump planet."
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