Canadian PM defends 'Lake Ontario' name after Trump renaming order

OTTAWA - Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday that the name "Lake Ontario" carries a long history and that Canadians will always use this name regardless of external changes.

Carney wrote in a post on X that the name came from the Wendat word Ontari'io, which means "the lake is beautiful, the lake is big."

The Canadian prime minister made the remarks after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier on Thursday, directing the Department of the Interior to rename the lake "Lake America," as trade tensions between the United States and Canada have been escalating.

The two sides failed to reach a trade deal on Aug 21, and the United States imposed a 50-percent tariff on about 20 billion US dollars' worth of Canadian goods on Aug 22. Canada responded by announcing "dollar-for-dollar" retaliatory tariffs on imports from the United States, set to take effect on Sept 8.

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," added the prime minister.

"We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms," Carney said.

"Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario -- then, now and always," he wrote.

Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes of North America, straddles the US-Canada border, with the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and the US state of New York to the south.