Trump Renamed Lake Ontario ‘Lake America.’ The Towns That Voted for Him Three Times Are Keeping the Old Name

If Lake America was going to catch on anywhere, it should have been here. President Trump ordered federal agencies to call Lake Ontario by the new name, and the towns on its New York shore are his kind of country: he carried Oswego County with more than 60% in 2024 and has won six of the seven lakeside counties in all three of his runs. Instead, constituents packed a county legislature meeting in Lake Ontario shirts and hats, and the legislators — 18 Republicans, 7 Democrats — voted unanimously to condemn the new name. John Martino, the Republican majority leader and a Trump supporter, told the Journal the matter is closed: “It’s Lake Ontario. It’s going to be Lake Ontario. That’s it.”

The order came as the trade fight with Canada flared and follows the January 2025 renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. Google Maps, owned by Alphabet (GOOGL), and Apple (AAPL) Maps switched U.S. users to the new name within days. New York didn’t: Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state won’t be calling it that. An August Reuters/Ipsos poll found 63% of Americans opposed and 14% in favor, with more Republicans against it than for it. Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.), who represents most of the lakeside towns, told TMZ the president likes to troll people with name changes and cited her district’s ties with Canada.

The sweatshirt index

Then there’s the shoreline. John Hagner, a longtime Trump supporter, tried out Lake America once while fishing and got screamed at by two older women; he’s sticking with Lake Ontario and mostly wants the war over and gas cheaper. At the Sackets Harbor marathon on Sept. 6, someone chalked Lake America by the water; someone else crossed it out and wrote Lake Ontario in bolder lines. Ryan Cohen, who manages a marina in Henderson and doesn’t vote, isn’t changing his signs — his Canadian customers are good neighbors — and the neighbors he describes as hardcore MAGA backed him. And at the Lake Ontario Gift Shop in Sackets Harbor, the owner sold out in three days of Lake Ontario sweatshirts that had sat on the shelf for months. She is ordering more and has told customers the shop’s name isn’t changing either.

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Two money lessons sit on that shore. The first is on the map: Google and Apple changed the label in days, and not one drop of the water changed. Money does this too: a fund picks up a trendier name, an annuity rider gets a friendlier one, a note is sold as principal-protected — and none of that is automatically a trick, but the name does the marketing while the holdings, the fees and the terms do the work. A protected note is protected exactly as far as its fine print and its issuer’s promise reach. Read the holdings and the terms, not the name. When a label is doing the persuading, open the prospectus, not your wallet.

The second is the sweatshirts. Months on the shelf, gone in three days, and nothing about the sweatshirt changed — what changed was that people felt their identity was in play. That reflex is real and not always wrong, but it’s the same one that buys the hometown stock, holds the employer’s shares too long, or sells everything the day a headline feels like an attack on who you are. The lake isn’t going anywhere. A money decision that feels like a defense of who you are can wait a day and get counted first.