Why Not Just Lake Trump?*
Published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
(Germany) on 28 August 2026
by Nikolas Busse (link to
original)
Trump’s politics of renaming shouldn’t be underestimated. It gives his voters something that the competition isn’t offering.
What really should be most surprising is the fact that the American president didn’t rename Lake Ontario as Lake Trump. For the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Trump would also have been much more fitting than the rather unglamorous Gulf of America for a man who names hotels and high-rises after himself.
Such renaming has few practical consequences, but shouldn’t be underestimated. The culture wars are being fought with it on the other side of the political spectrum too. Barack Obama renamed Mount McKinley as Denali to restore the indigenous name of the mountain in Alaska. (Donald Trump reversed it.)
Who Belongs to the Nation?
Similarly, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that the name of Lake Ontario was derived from an indigenous word. Particularly in a colonized territory like North America, what is ultimately at issue is who counts as belonging to the nation and what position they have in it.
Like the far-right populists in Europe, Trump is profiting from the fact that many in the white majority have come under the impression in recent years that they have been left out of public discourse. Trump’s voters will know that it is not of any use to them personally if a lake that the United States shares with Canada comes closer to their own country by virtue of its name. They probably won’t expect much from Trump’s tariff wars either.
However, from their perspective, they are getting something that the competition (on the left) isn’t offering: national pride. And Trump is attacking that of the Canadians.
*Editor’s note: This article is available in its original German with a paid subscription.
What really should be most surprising is the fact that the American president didn’t rename Lake Ontario as Lake Trump. For the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Trump would also have been much more fitting than the rather unglamorous Gulf of America for a man who names hotels and high-rises after himself.
Such renaming has few practical consequences, but shouldn’t be underestimated. The culture wars are being fought with it on the other side of the political spectrum too. Barack Obama renamed Mount McKinley as Denali to restore the indigenous name of the mountain in Alaska. (Donald Trump reversed it.)
Who Belongs to the Nation?
Similarly, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that the name of Lake Ontario was derived from an indigenous word. Particularly in a colonized territory like North America, what is ultimately at issue is who counts as belonging to the nation and what position they have in it.
Like the far-right populists in Europe, Trump is profiting from the fact that many in the white majority have come under the impression in recent years that they have been left out of public discourse. Trump’s voters will know that it is not of any use to them personally if a lake that the United States shares with Canada comes closer to their own country by virtue of its name. They probably won’t expect much from Trump’s tariff wars either.
However, from their perspective, they are getting something that the competition (on the left) isn’t offering: national pride. And Trump is attacking that of the Canadians.
*Editor’s note: This article is available in its original German with a paid subscription.