I wrote an article about sector separation last summer mentioning how efforts to split the recreational community into pieces have already been well underway in the Gulf of Mexico. I asked a friend who’s active in federal fisheries management to fact-check my work, and he reminded me that President Trump’s executive order renaming that waterbody Gulf of America was essentially binding at the federal level. So for accuracy’s sake, the article was published referencing Gulf of America, which led to a lovely email from a reader:
“The Gulf of Mexico is not the Gulf of America you nut job.
You are an a*****e and need to be boycotted.”
Since that prickly little back and forth, I just followed everyone else’s lead by saying “The Gulf,” or “down in the Gulf States.” Thankfully I don’t have to worry too much about reporting on red snapper and grouper action off Mississippi and Louisiana, so I’ve since kept mostly clear of potential boycotts from the word police.
Until now.
On August 27, 2026, President Trump issued executive order 14420 proclaiming that Lake Ontario now be called Lake America. The smallest of the five Great Lakes by surface area, this lake sits between New York State and the Canadian province of Ontario, but I doubt too many Canadians are rushing out to print new shirts for American tourists.
As per the presidential order, the Secretary of the Interior, in coordination with the Board on Geographic Names, was given 30 days to make the change. “The Secretary, conjointly with the Board on Geographic Names, shall subsequently update the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) to reflect the renaming of the Lake and remove all references to Lake Ontario from the GNIS, consistent with applicable law,” the executive order states. It goes on to task the “Board on Geographic Names” with providing guidance to ensure that all federal government references – including on executive department and agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications – reflect the name change. So how old were you when you learned we had a national Board on Geographic Names?
This whole endeavor may seem downright infuriating to some, perhaps a source of national pride to others. Personally, I think it’s silly, especially when it puts writers in yet another precarious position straddling two wildly extremist segments of the population. This fall many anglers will head north to Niagara and Oswego counties to fish for trout and salmon, and we’ll be reporting on some of that action here in The Fisherman. And while some folks don’t like mixing politics with fishing, recent experience shows I really can’t avoid it; basically, I should expect to receive nastygrams, from either the political left or the right, no matter what word I used to describe where the salmon are running.
According to the Center for Great Lakes Literacy, Lake Ontario’s name predates the naming of the Canadian city, coming from the Iroquois word Ontarí’io meaning “lake of shining waters.” In fact, the present leader of the Seneca Nation was quick to claim the president’s renaming actually violates the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua signed by then President George Washington.
Short of any middle-ground option here on a name that’s been in American existence since the 1600s, it got me wondering how upstate New York outdoor journalists would deal with the name change in their own backyard. “Too hot of a topic,” one upstate fishing writer told me, off-the-record of course. Other outdoor media sources on the Lake of Shining Waters beat chose not respond.
Which really shouldn’t come as a surprise I guess; what writer in his right mind would dare risk alienation and rebuke in this dystopian world of ours, just for talking candidly about fish, fishing and fisheries in these “mostly” United States?
