President Donald Trump told a South Carolina rally he asked Google about renaming the Atlantic Ocean after himself, and that the company’s CEO turned him down because oceans touch many countries.
Trump recounted the exchange Wednesday, saying he reached out after Google had already updated its maps for earlier U.S. renaming orders. He told the crowd he would probably leave the Atlantic alone.
Newsweek reported the remarks and noted Google has not publicly confirmed the conversation took place. The White House and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names also had not commented when the outlet sought responses Thursday.
The episode fits a broader push by Trump to put American labels on major waters under federal authority. It also shows the hard limit he described when a feature stretches far beyond U.S. shores.
In January 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing that the Gulf of Mexico be called the Gulf of America for U.S. federal use. Google Maps later showed that name to users in the United States while other countries kept the old label.
In August 2026, he signed another order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America. Google again updated the display for U.S. users. Canadian users still saw Lake Ontario.
Trump pointed to that cooperation when he described his latest call. He said Google Maps had been “really great with the lake.”
"We seriously looked at the Atlantic Ocean, I called Google Maps who were really great with the lake, really great and I spoke to a brilliant guy, Sundar, he heads all of Google, he's a brilliant guy, Sergey and Sundar, totally brilliant guys,"
Trump told the South Carolina audience, according to the reported remarks.
He said he put the question directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
"And I said Sundar I'm thinking of the Atlantic Ocean can you handle it?"
Trump then gave Pichai’s answer as he remembered it.
"'No, no, no this time I'm not doing it,' he said,"
And, in Trump’s telling, the CEO added a practical reason.
"'Oceans are different, sir, they cover really a lot of countries please don't ask us to do that.'"
Trump put the choice back to the crowd.
"So I’ll probably pass it, should I pass? I think let's keep it the Atlantic Ocean, right?"
That is the account he shared on stage. Google had not issued a public confirmation of the call itself.
Earlier this month at a Tennessee rally, Trump said the Gulf and the lake were not the end of the list. Someone, he said, had told him he still needed a river.
"We've got the Gulf, we've got a beautiful lake, and now somebody said, 'You need a river,'"
He said he had been thinking about the Atlantic or the Pacific, and floated names such as “Trump Ocean” or “Ocean of the Americas.” He has also raised the idea of calling the Strait of Hormuz the “Trump Strait.”
The South Carolina story made clear which target he said he tested with Google, and which one he said he was prepared to drop.
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names standardizes names for federal use. The board dates to 1890 and was reorganized by Congress in 1947.
Its domestic approach generally discourages changing existing names without a compelling reason. Proposals are reviewed case by case, with weight given to local usage, public input, and recommendations from other government bodies.
Standard domestic policy also bars naming geographic features after living people. Names set by presidential executive order or by Congress can be handled differently. Even when the United States adopts a federal name, other countries and international bodies are not required to follow it.
Google has said its mapping policy reflects official government sources, including the U.S. Geographic Names Information System. That is the framework Trump cited when he described the company updating U.S. views of the Gulf of America and Lake America.
An ocean is a different category. It borders many nations. Trump said that was exactly the point Pichai raised, and that he was inclined to accept it.
Newsweek contacted Google by email, the White House through an online form, and the Board on Geographic Names by email on Thursday. No on-the-record replies from those offices were included in the initial report.
The absolute calendar dates for the South Carolina rally, the earlier Tennessee rally, and the Thursday outreach were not fixed beyond the relative labels in the coverage. Full text of the January 2025 and August 2026 executive orders was not reproduced in the report.
What the public has is Trump’s own stage account, the prior federal renaming orders, Google’s map updates for U.S. users on those earlier changes, and the long-standing limits on how far a single country’s labels travel across shared waters.
American waters can carry American names when the federal government sets the terms. Open ocean is shared ground, and even a president willing to test the idea can decide the old name still works.
