COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy proposed renaming another major body of water on Friday, following President Donald Trump’s unilateral renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
“Anybody think if there’s a Lake Michigan, maybe there should be a Lake Ohio around here?” Ramaswamy, a Republican from Columbus, said this on Friday at a local GOP fundraiser in suburban Toledo, about 13 miles from Lake Erie’s shores. “I am feeling it. “We’ll talk about that more as the campaign progresses.”
A campaign spokesperson claimed Ramaswamy was making a joke. Ramaswamy smiled broadly after making the comments, prompting applause and scattered shouts of approval from the audience.
It was unclear from the video whether Ramaswamy was referring to renaming Lake Erie, which was named after the Native American tribe that lived along its shores when Europeans first arrived in the 1600s.
Erie is the only one of the five Great Lakes to touch Ohio.
Ohio has plenty of other lesser lakes, such as Grand Lake Saint Mary and Mosquito Lake (the latter of which a state lawmaker proposed renaming in Trump’s honor a few years ago), but none of them can match the grandeur of being named after the nation’s 17th state.
Changing the name of Lake Erie to Lake Ohio would be confusing, both etymologically and geographically.
The state of Ohio is named after the Ohio River, which does not flow near Lake Erie. The two bodies of water empty on nearly opposite sides of North America: the Ohio River (via the Mississippi River) into the Gulf of Mexico, and Lake Erie (via the Niagara, Lake Ontario, and St. Lawrence rivers) into the Atlantic Ocean.
Ramaswamy’s remark, even if made in jest, fits in — at least in tone — with what has become a central theme of his still-young campaign: how, as governor, he will take action to restore Ohio to a level of prosperity and population growth not seen since the Industrial Revolution in the twentieth century.
Attorney General Dave Yost of Columbus, Ramaswamy’s only major primary challenger thus far, responded on X to Ramaswamy’s comments by noting that Lake Erie is mentioned in the Ohio Constitution “and at least 94 statutes.” He also noted that the state’s governor lacks unilateral authority to change.
Yost also mentioned that the word “Ohio” means “beautiful river” in the Seneca language.
Changing the name of Lake Erie, at least on US maps, would require approval from the US Board on Geographic Names.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s website, there “must be a compelling reason” given to change the name, and the most important factor is whether there is “local use and acceptance” of the name.
According to the Geological Survey’s website, the board only makes name changes after consulting with relevant state, local, and tribal governments, as well as land-management agencies.
Despite these obstacles, the board changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico on US maps, as Trump ordered shortly after beginning his second term in January.
Trump, of course, could issue a similar order for Lake Ohio. However, such action is unlikely to be well received in nearby swing states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
According to Hansong Li, a professor at American University’s School of International Service, in order to gain global recognition for a new name for a natural feature that is found in multiple countries (such as Lake Erie), the proposal must be well received by organizations such as the International Hydrographic Organization and the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names.
Because roughly half of the lake is in Canada, Ohio’s northern neighbor would also have to approve the change, which would have been difficult even before Trump imposed tariffs that sparked a trade war between the two countries.
Ramaswamy is not the first to propose changing Lake Erie’s name to Lake Ohio; there have been several scattered online calls for such a change in recent weeks, including a week-old online petition signed by 14 people as of Monday.
In addition, last month, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker jokingly responded to Trump’s “Gulf of America” order by declaring that Lake Michigan would be renamed “Lake Illinois.”
