A Lake by Any Other Name

On the first day of his second term, January 20, 2025, the U.S. President signed Executive Order 14172, “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” It designated North America’s highest mountain Mount McKinley (formerly Denali) and the sea between the U.S., Mexico, and Cuba the Gulf of America (formerly Gulf of Mexico). A further executive order (#14422), signed last month on August 27, was titled “Honoring the American History of the Great Lakes and Renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America.”

What makes a place name official, and who gets to change it? People refer to places long before officialdom gets involved. Anyone in my rural area could recognize Big Hill or Goose Pond. After the U.S. Civil War, westward exploration and settlement boomed. Inconsistent names and spellings proved a challenge for planning maps, mines, and railroads. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) was created in 1890 to standardize usage throughout the federal government. Today the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with BGN, maintains a database called the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).

Executive Orders 14172 and 14422 direct the Interior Secretary to implement the place name changes, remove the former names from GNIS, and have BGN work with federal agencies to update maps, contracts, and documents accordingly. The orders are binding on the U.S. federal government only. Cities, states, foreign nations, non-governmental agencies, and private companies can use whichever names they choose, and so can you and I.

Image: Ontario Beach Park, Rochester, New York. Photo by Andre Carrotflower, 2020.