Kathrine Frich
He says the US needs its own ocean and river to match his earlier changes.
World maps usually stay the same for generations unless a border shifts or a country splits.
Most of us take the familiar labels on our globes for granted. Yet one powerful leader wants to take a marker to the planet’s biggest bodies of water again.
A new ocean name
US President Donald Trump wants to rename the Atlantic Ocean as the American Ocean, the Daily Express reported. Speaking at a Republican rally in Mississippi on Monday, he claimed that “Europe will be thrilled” with the idea.
According to the Daily Express, the president told the crowd the country needs its own ocean and river to match his earlier changes.
In January 2025, he signed an executive order turning the Gulf of Mexico into the “Gulf of America”, and in August he rebranded Lake Ontario as “Lake America”.
His Monday comments echoed remarks from a South Carolina rally last week. There, he revealed that Google had turned down his pitch to name the Atlantic after either the United States or himself.
Calling the Google boss
During that earlier appearance, the president said he phoned Google chief executive Sundar Pichai directly to float the idea.
“I only like two oceans: the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. I’m not going to put either Trump or America on any other ocean but these two,” he told supporters, according to the Daily Express.
He then shared more details about the call. “So we seriously looked at the Atlantic Ocean and I called Google Maps, who were really great with the lake, they’re still rattled from the Gulf. I said: ‘Sundar, I’m thinking of the Atlantic Ocean’.”
Tech giant pushes back
Pichai refused and begged the president not to ask the company to make the change, Trump said.
Earlier, Google updated the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America for American users, citing its standard policy of following official government updates, while people outside the US see “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America”.
The Mississippi stop is part of a wider campaign tour ahead of the midterm elections on Tuesday, November 3, the Daily Express noted.
Trump was there backing Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is locked in a tight race against Democratic challenger Scott Colom in the usually safe conservative state.
