Trump Says Google CEO Rejected Request to Rename Atlantic Ocean
President Donald Trump told a South Carolina rally that Google CEO Sundar Pichai refused his request to rename the Atlantic Ocean, citing the difficulty of renaming waters shared by many countries. Trump has already renamed the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario for federal use, but an ocean presents far greater legal and diplomatic obstacles.
President Donald Trump says he asked Google to rename the Atlantic Ocean and was turned down by CEO Sundar Pichai, marking a rare limit on a naming campaign that has already redrawn the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario on U.S. maps.
Speaking at a rally in Pendleton, South Carolina, on Wednesday, Trump recounted a conversation in which Pichai explained that oceans span multiple countries and asked him not to pursue the change. Trump recalled the CEO saying, «No, no, no. This time, I'm not doing it,» and urging him, «Please don't ask us to do that.» Trump then asked the crowd, «Should I pass on… I think let's keep it the Atlantic Ocean, right?»
The president did not stop at the Atlantic. He floated renaming the Pacific the «American Ocean» and asked how Europe would react, even though no part of Europe borders the Pacific. The remarks follow a similar riff at a rally in Dalton, Georgia, last Friday, when Trump said he had asked Google about renaming either the Atlantic or the Pacific the «Trump Ocean.» He told the crowd the company had replied, «We've had it. That's enough. We're not doing it anymore,» then said he was only kidding and had sent Google «a little picture» labeled «The Trump Ocean.»
Trump first teased an ocean rename in August, when he signed an order renaming Lake Ontario in the Oval Office. Google did not respond to a request for comment on Trump's account or on whether it had received a formal request to rename the Atlantic.
The push to rename geographic features began on Trump's first day back in office. On Jan. 20, 2025, he signed an executive order directing the federal government to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. On Aug. 27, 2026, he signed Executive Order 14422 renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America, despite the lake being shared with Canada.
Renaming an entire ocean is a far more complicated proposition than a gulf or a lake. For federal use, names of oceans and seas fall under the Foreign Names Committee of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, according to a September report by the Congressional Research Service. Trump could direct federal agencies to adopt a different name for the Atlantic or Pacific, but that would not bind anyone else.
Lake Ontario illustrates the limits. Trump's order renamed it for U.S. federal use, but Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the change, saying Canadians would keep calling it Lake Ontario «then, now and always.» A United Nations resolution on geographical names holds that when countries sharing a feature cannot agree, each country's name is accepted and one country's choice does not override the others. An ocean bordered by dozens of countries would be far harder to rename than a gulf or a lake.
Google was not legally required to adopt either name change. The Congressional Research Service report notes that federal naming decisions do not bind private companies such as Google Maps and Apple Maps. Still, Google Maps adopted the Gulf of America and Lake America for U.S. users after the federal Geographic Names Information System was updated, following its long-standing policy of reflecting official government sources and showing different names by country.
The Gulf decision carried a cost: Mexico sued Google over the label. For Lake Ontario, Canadian users continue to see the original name, and users outside the U.S. and Canada see both. Apple Maps made the same switch for U.S. users days later, while rival MapQuest refused to adopt the new name. Its app climbed from No. 128 on Apple's U.S. App Store on Aug. 28 to No. 1 overall by Sept. 1, recording an estimated 632,000 U.S. downloads after Trump's order, according to Sensor Tower data reported by TechCrunch.
From floating «Trump Strait» for the Strait of Hormuz to proposing «American Ocean» for the Pacific, Trump has no shortage of new names. But if his account of Pichai's reluctance is accurate, an entire ocean may be one step too far for Google.
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