Google CEO Puts Foot Down on Trump Name Change

President Trump says he toyed with an idea that would make cartographers cringe: giving the Atlantic Ocean a new name. At a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday, he recounted calling Google CEO Sundar Pichai to ask if the company could reflect such a switch on its maps, after previously adopting Trump-backed name changes for the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario for US users, reports the Washington Post. According to Trump, Pichai pushed back, saying oceans were "different" because they touch many countries and urging him not to make the request.

"No, no, no. This time, I'm not doing it," Pichai responded, according to Trump, who said Pichai then added: "Please don't ask us to do that." The president told the crowd in South Carolina that he'd been mulling over a river to rename, potentially the Hudson or Mississippi, but that he then had started eyeing bigger bodies of water, per the AP. He then mentioned that he'd "probably pass" on renaming the Atlantic, but he floated a different possibility: rebranding the Pacific as "the American Ocean." Google hasn't confirmed the conversation and didn't respond to a request for comment. The Guardian notes that Mexico and Canada still use the original Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario names.