Lake Ontario got its name before US independence and will keep it — Canadian PM

WASHINGTON, August 28. /TASS/. Lake Ontario, which US President Donald Trump renamed Lake America, got its name over 400 years ago, long before the US declaration of independence, and will keep it, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said.

"The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontariio, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big,’" Carney wrote on the X social network. "The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America."

"We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms," the Canadian premier continued. "Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario - then, now and always."

On August 27, Trump signed an executive order to rename the lake, effective immediately.