ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A newly prominent commentator on geographic nomenclature said Saturday that President Trump’s executive order redesignating Lake Ontario as “Lake America” for U.S. federal purposes will not change the body of water itself. “You can’t just change the name of a lake and expect it to be different in reality,” said Sally, who was formerly Steve. Sally, who holds dual doctorates and has written extensively on the social construction of place names, made the remarks at a poorly attended briefing beside the water in Charlotte, N.Y. She spoke for eleven minutes. The lake remained where it was. The order, signed Thursday, directs the Interior Department and the Board on Geographic Names to update federal maps, contracts, and the Geographic Names Information System within 30 days. Administration officials have noted that the deepest parts of the lake and a majority of its volume lie on the American side. Canada, which controls slightly more than half the surface area, has declined to participate. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state would not adopt the new name. MapQuest said it would not either. Sally said she was “broadly sympathetic to the administrative impulse.” She noted that individuals routinely update names, pronouns, and professional credentials, and that institutions often follow. A lake, she said, presents a different case. “A person can file the paperwork and then stand there while other people adjust,” she said. “A lake cannot stand there. It has no standing, in the ordinary sense. It has a watershed.” She added that the name Ontario derives from an Iroquoian term commonly translated as “lake of shining waters” and has appeared on European maps since the 1660s, predating both the United States and Canada. “The shining,” she said, “has not been shown to correlate with the current trade deficit.” White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the lake had been notified. The U.S. Geological Survey confirmed that electronic federal documents now reflect the new designation and that printed materials will follow “over the next several days.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said the lake will continue to be called Lake Ontario “then, now and always.” Local fishermen interviewed along the shore said they had not noticed a change in the water. One said the perch were “the same perch.” Another asked whether the tariffs applied to the fish. Sally concluded that habit, not executive action, determines what most people call large, old things. Google search data released Friday showed that users in all 50 states were still looking up “Lake Ontario” more frequently than “Lake America.” “That is not resistance,” she said. “That is memory. Memory is very difficult to rename.” The lake, which covers approximately 7,340 square miles and empties into the St. Lawrence River, did not issue a statement. The post ‘You can’t just change the name of a lake and expect it to be different in reality’ says Sally (formerly called Steve) appeared first on Genesius Times.