Trump wanted a ‘Trump Ocean’ on Google Maps. He says CEO Sundar Pichai shut it down
President Donald Trump has another body of water in mind for a name change: the Atlantic Ocean. But this time, he says, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told him no.
“We seriously looked at the Atlantic Ocean, and I called Google Maps, who were really great with the lake,” Trump said at a rally in Pendleton, S.C., on Wednesday.
“No, no, no. This time, I’m not doing it,” Trump recalled Pichai saying. According to Trump, Pichai explained that oceans span multiple countries and urged him, “Please don’t ask us to do that.”
“Should I pass on… I think let’s keep it the Atlantic Ocean, right?” Trump asked the crowd.
But Trump wasn’t finished with the oceans. He then floated renaming the Pacific the “American Ocean” and asked how Europe would feel about it, though no part of Europe borders the Pacific.
It wasn’t the first time Trump had raised the idea. At a rally in Dalton, Ga., last Friday, Trump said he had asked Google about renaming either the Atlantic or the Pacific the “Trump Ocean.”
“You know what they said? ‘We’ve had it. That’s enough. We’re not doing it anymore,’” Trump told the crowd.
He said he was only kidding. He then added that he had sent Google “a little picture” labeled “The Trump Ocean,” and that the company called back to say oceans were different. “I said I was only kidding. That time I was,” Trump said.
Trump first teased an ocean rename in August, when he signed the order renaming Lake Ontario in the Oval Office.
Fortune asked Google to confirm Trump’s account of the conversation and whether it had received a formal request to rename the Atlantic Ocean. Fortune also asked how Google would handle a proposed name change for an ocean shared by multiple countries. Google did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Trump’s push to rename geographic landmarks began on his 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, even though the lake is shared with Canada.
Can Trump rename an entire ocean?
For federal use, names of oceans and seas fall under the Foreign Names Committee, part of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. That’s according to a September report by the Congressional Research Service, Congress’s nonpartisan research arm.
Trump could direct federal agencies to adopt a different name for the Atlantic or Pacific. That would not make the change binding anywhere else.
Lake Ontario shows 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.”
Internationally, a United Nations resolution on geographical names says that when countries sharing a feature can’t agree on a common name, each country’s name is accepted. One country’s choice doesn’t override the others’. An ocean bordered by dozens of countries would be far harder to rename than a gulf or a lake.
Google didn’t have to follow Trump’s lead. But it did.
Google was not legally required to adopt either name change. The CRS report notes that federal naming decisions don’t 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. Google said the changes followed its long-standing policy of reflecting official government sources and showing different names for bodies of water by country.
For the Gulf, users in Mexico still see Gulf of Mexico, while users outside the U.S. and Mexico see both names. 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.
Business Insider reported that Google was “getting flak” over the lake rename, facing backlash from users and Canadian officials.
Meanwhile, rival MapQuest refused to adopt the new name, as it had with the Gulf. Its app climbed from No. 128 on Apple’s U.S. App Store on Aug. 28 to No. 1 overall by Sept. 1. The app recorded an estimated 632,000 U.S. downloads after Trump’s Aug. 27 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.
