A state representative is asking President Donald Trump to rename Lake Erie to “Lake Pennsylvania.”
The proposal from a Keystone State lawmaker is likely to draw fire from Native American tribes which strongly objected to the president’s renaming of Lake Ontario, also sourced from an Indian name. Lake Erie was named by a Native American tribe that once lived along its shores.
Pennsylvania Rep. David Maloney, a Republican, says he’s preparing a resolution asking Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and others on Capitol Hill to make the name change following the president’s renaming of Lake Ontario to Lake America, Fox News reported Saturday.
Leaders of several Native American tribes in the region have argued that such proposals are in effect erasing the Native American origins of North America’s history.
Ontario comes from an Indian word meaning “lake of shining waters,” while Erie comes from an Iroquois word for the Eastern Cougar. All four of the five other Great Lakes, with the exception of Lake Superior, which got its name from early French explorers, are sourced from Native American words.
Maloney, who represents a district of about 65,000 people in southeastern Pennsylvania which does not border the lake, argues the change is needed to reflect the lake’s modern identity, according to the Fox News report.
“This is Pennsylvania’s only Great Lake,” the lawmaker said in a statement. “Its modern economy and identity are increasingly tied to the boaters, anglers, families, and tourists who come to enjoy it.”
He continued, “Ohio has plenty of shoreline. New York already has two Great Lakes. Canada has four others.”
“Pennsylvania has one. Let’s call it Lake Pennsylvania!” he added.
The 240-mile-long lake is the fourth largest of the Great Lakes by surface area and the smallest by water volume. It is also the shallowest, with a maximum depth of 210 feet.
Some 12 million people live along its waters, with 10.5 million of them in the U.S. and 1.9 million in Canada.
Canada has not responded yet to Maloney’s proposal, but government leaders have refused to recognize Trump’s executive order last month renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.”
Tribal leaders have not commented yet on Maloney’s proposal for Lake Erie, but they were quick to condemn the renaming of Lake Ontario.
The leader of the Seneca Nation in upstate New York argued that the Ontario renaming violates a 225-year old treaty signed by George Washington in 1794.
Wyandotte and Mohawk tribal leaders have also protested the Lake Ontario change, with one leader calling it “disrespectful” and saying the Department of Interior failed to consult tribal nations on bodies of water named by indigenous people before either the U.S. or Canada were founded.
According to Fox News:
The renaming only applies to the U.S. federal government, meaning Canada, other international bodies, and U.S. states are not forced to acknowledge the change. But both Apple Maps and Google Maps changed the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” for U.S. users following Trump’s executive order.
The president has also suggested renaming New Mexico to “New America,” prompting several of the state’s Democratic lawmakers to call on Apple and Google to publicly commit to keeping the state’s current name on their respective maps’ applications.
It’s not known yet if the renaming efforts will impact elections in the Great Lakes states in the 2026 midterms, with key races for both Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate.
However, according to a nationwide Reuters/Ipsos poll of more than 1,000 adults in late August, 63 percent of respondents disapproved of the renaming of Lake Ontario compared to only 14 percent who approved of the change.
Former Michiganian and Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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