Donald Trump: We're going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America.

Host: Do you ever wonder what happens after Trump says that? Like, is there an intern sitting at Google listening to every announcement who runs to the maps teams and screams, "Update the map?" How much money does a change like this cost? Does Google really have to rename the map? And what happens if they refuse?

To be fair, the US is not the only country that does that. China, India, New Zealand, Russia. In fact, my native country of Ukraine is also famous for political rebranding. But then again, to be fair, many of the former countries of the Eastern Block are. Sometimes those rebrandings make sense. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to them other than political agenda or quite frankly propaganda.

And this time, President Trump ordered the renaming of one of the Great Lakes, historically called Lake Ontario, to Lake America. As someone who lives a 20-minute walk away from the Lake of Ontario, I couldn't help but wonder if you remove personal opinions from the equation, who are the people that will actually be making the change, Gulf of Mexico, Straight of Hormuz, even oceans. What's fueling the wave of political rebranding? Who pays for it? How much? And how does stuff like this actually happen? Let's dive in.

August 22nd, trade negotiations between the US and Canada fall through because the conditions that have been negotiated broke apart over lastminute disputes. That becomes the tipping point. Two days after the talk, Trump posts of all places on TikTok that the US is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America and that we don't expect to be doing much business with Ontario anymore.

Presumably, this is the first time when the public, including Canadian officials, learns about this change. I find it fascinating that a presidential order involving an international border lake resembles a Saturday Night Live sketch when you start doubting if they're actually serious or if it's a meme. But I digress. On August 27th, Trump summons the White House press pool to witness the signing during which he also makes a joke about the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Donald Trump: About it. We have a Gulf and we have a lake. Now all we need is an ocean. But I digress.

Host: And this is the point where the footage stops.

Donald Trump: Can't do it anymore. We love the people of Canada. I don't think the representatives do an appropriate job. Maybe they'll change. I really don't know. It doesn't make much difference.

Host: And the next point that you see is the new name on Google Maps. How does this happen? What happens between the moment when we see the signed order and the moment when we see the new name on maps?

Step one, the US Board of Geographic Names or BGN, a century old federal committee whose entire job is arbitrating what geographic objects are actually officially called with an awfully modern looking website where the SSLert seems to have expired. Perhaps worth letting your IT department know, edits a single record inside a database.

The database is called the geographic names information system or GNIS. Once that is done, the change propagates to federal agencies because they pull from GNIS automatically. Their data sets sync against GNIS. Every agencies except one, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has its own database, so they make that change manually.

Now, up until this point, everything that happened must happen by law. BGN makes the change and all federal agencies must comply whether they like it or not. If you're curious about the legal basis that this order invokes, it is title 43, United States Code Section 364. The order directs BGN to provide guidance to ensure that all federal government references to Lake Ontario, including one on executive department and agency maps, contracts, and other documents as well as communications shall reflect the new naming. And therefore, BGN can do nothing but comply.

Host: But what about private tech? Do they have to make this change on maps?

Google and Apple are not legally required to do anything. Why? Because president's order cannot compel private companies to change their naming conventions. Executive orders, even of the presidential order, only bind the federal government, but they have no jurisdiction over private companies. Map Quest, the relic of late 90s and 2000s, which is still being used, by the way, publicly refused to make the update and still displays the Gulf of Mexico more than a year and a half after the order and still chose Lake Ontario. That is to say that private tech does not have to comply from the legal standpoint.

But why do they do it anyway? especially considering the fact that big tech has a pretty big representation of Canadians, including the ones in executive leadership, who would most likely oppose the change.

First of all, Google's own explanation is that it has a long-standing practice of updating map labels to reflect name changes in official government sources and sites GNIS specifically as that trigger. And reason number two, the Oval Office can very much apply political and reputational pressure. You can find this information in the New York magazine and BBC media which reported that the White House actually applied pressure and pushed Apple to do it. And so it is becoming simply cheaper to comply than start a cultural war with the country where your main offices are located. Both Google and Apple limit the change to US users to satisfy the political pressure and preserve the original name for non-US users. And for everybody else, they show a hybrid.

Host: And now let's talk money.

All of the steps that we talked about, executive order, GNIS update, federal system autosync, Google and Apple making changes, the cost of everything in this chain is fairly negligible. Sure, if you really get into the guts of it, you can count the number of hours that people spent on this. But the real costs kick in when the change moves to the physical world. And it starts affecting things that you wouldn't necessarily think about. GPS units, printed books and maps, road signs, tourism boards, school textbooks, transit maps. Each one requires a discrete manual decision and a discrete budget.

So, using the recent example with the Gulf of Mexico, how much does a political renaming cost? Nobody publishes official communications or official numbers on how much was spent, and it's incredibly difficult to find any sort of evidence of how much exactly got spent, but we can do the math. I found several independent estimates online, most of them converging on roughly $2 billion, with education being the biggest affected factor.

I'd like to challenge that. I actually think it's less. Let's see. Florida changed dozens of road signs to say Gulf of America. A typical installed road sign runs between $100 to $200 depending on the size. And a full rural sign replacement runs about $800 per location. The famous Pensacola Beach spent $2,600 alone on the landmark sign that's been sitting there since the 60s. So, we're looking at approximately $2 to 3 million. Now, add signage and public infrastructure in all coastal states outside of Florida. We're probably looking at several hundred million. all state agencies and paperwork at federal agencies such as hurricane advisory, flood maps, permits that reference Gulf by the name, about $100 million total, tourism, shipping, logistics, litigations, international disputes, $2 million more or less.

Host: And now education. Now, the fact that the US administration changed the name of the Gulf does not mean that schools are actually going to start ripping out pages from books or maps that they already have. And it doesn't mean that the moment the change becomes public, school boards across the country will mass buy new textbooks just for the sake of using the new name.

By law, only online courses and online books purchased after July 1st, 2025 must use Gulf of America, while books that are already in classrooms stay in use until they're due for replacement. The books with the updated name will only become a cost when a school's district purchasing cycle comes around and the school district buys from the state approved vendor list at which point it's automatically buying the updated version.

But when the purchasing cycle hits, schools buy those books one way or another. They're not doing it because the name has changed. They're doing it because it is a regular procedure and they have to update the books. So that cost cannot be attributed directly to the name change which is why I disagree with education being cited as the most affected area. The only time when the name change becomes a newly added cost is when a district or a state is not planning to replace textbooks but they feel political or legal pressure to do so sooner than scheduled.

So to sum it up, I would argue that it's actually less than $2 billion per change. I would say that the number is probably in the hundreds of millions. Now, it is fair to say that Lake America definitely isn't the last and definitely not the most expensive rebranding we're about to see. After all, it's a lake.

Host: We're filming this video on September 4th, and just yesterday, there was another announcement of proposed name change for the straight of Hermuz. So, there's that.

And to wrap up the episode, I want to cover one last question. Why? What's the grand goal behind these renamings?

The truth is there are several explanations with none of them being mutually exclusive. It is a popular tool for diversion. Diversion from the war in Iran, diversion from what CNN called failure after Ottawa walked away from talks. Just like the New York Times traces the same playbook to the Redskins commander demand which surfaced right after the Epstein story was dominating news cycles.

At the same time, it's good old-fashioned branding because, well, in President's Trump's case, that's who he is. A parent naming a child, a businessman naming his towers. It's symbolic. It's ideological in many ways. And it is pure self-branding.

If you ask me, I think it's all of those things at once. The public hates it, and most polls make it look like a political dud, but branding and political analysts agree on one thing. It is still effective as spectacle, as a way to seize the news cycle, as a way to instill dominance, as a way to spark a national argument, or as CNN put it, it is trolling at its most authentic.

We hope this was helpful and we'll see you in the next episode.