President Donald Trump says Google Maps talked him out of the Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming plan. Speaking at a rally in Clemson, South Carolina, on Wednesday, Oct. 22, Trump said he called Google chief executive Sundar Pichai about the idea and got a firm no.
“I only like two oceans, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean,” Trump told the crowd. “I’m not going to put either Trump or America on any other ocean but these two. So, we seriously looked at the Atlantic Ocean and I called Google Maps, who were really great with the Lake (America), and I spoke to a brilliant guy, Sundar (Pichai). He heads all of Google. He’s a brilliant guy.”
Trump said he pitched the Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming plan and asked Google if it could “handle it.” The answer, he said, was no. “No, no, no, this time I’m not doing it, he (Pichai) said,” Trump said. “He said ‘Oceans are different, sir. They cover a lot of countries. Please don’t ask us to do that.'”
“So, I’ll probably pass,” Trump said, before asking the crowd what they thought. “I think let’s keep it the Atlantic Ocean.”
Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming plan at the rally
The Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming idea grew out of the president’s push to rebrand prominent geographic landmarks. At the Clemson rally, Trump ran through the places he has already renamed and said he does not intend to rename either the Hudson River in New York or the Mississippi River. But the ocean, he said, had real appeal.
Trump explained that he was interested in renaming an ocean because “I’m very, I was always high-end.” He added: “My father said that kid has the greatest eye for location,” referring to himself.
The crowd heard him out and, when he asked their opinion, he landed on keeping the name. The Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming plan ended the same night it was described in full.
Why the Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming stopped
The Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming idea had been floated two weeks earlier. At a rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, on Oct. 10, Trump suggested renaming either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. “We’ve got the gulf. We’ve got a beautiful lake,” he told supporters. “Now, somebody said, ‘You need a river. We need a river.’ We need an ocean.”
He proposed either “Trump Ocean” or “Ocean of the Americas” as possible names. “No, we have to,” he said. “We should have, before I get out, we should have an ocean and we need a great river.”
A president can direct how US government agencies refer to geographic features through executive action. But any name change would generally apply only to federal government usage and would not be binding internationally. That is especially true for the Atlantic and Pacific, which the Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming would have had to cover, with borders on multiple countries and long-established names recognized around the world. There is no international authority that could require other countries to adopt a new US-designated name. The Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming never reached the stage of an executive order.
Google, for its part, has said it follows official government names. In an earlier statement to USA TODAY, the company said it has “a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.” The Geographic Names Information System, which sits under the United States Geological Survey, provides the names used in Google Maps.
The name change applies to the United States. Google said that when official names vary between countries, “both applicable names will be shown,” and that Maps users see their official local name while everyone else sees both. An example is the Sea of Japan, also called the East Sea in a dispute between Japan and South Korea. In Google Maps in the United States, it appears as the Sea of Japan (East Sea).
A growing list of renamings
The Trump Atlantic Ocean renaming proposal was part of a wider rebranding push. Lake Ontario became Lake America and the Gulf of Mexico became the Gulf of America in US usage. The administration restored Fort Liberty’s former name, Fort Bragg, and changed the nation’s highest peak from Denali back to Mount McKinley.
More recently, Trump suggested New Mexico change its name to “New America,” arguing it would add value and prestige to the state. “New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America,” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday, Oct. 19. “We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America!”
A president cannot rename a state through executive order, USA TODAY previously reported. New Mexico’s name is established in the state’s constitution, and changing it would require the state to go through its own process.