The city of Cleveland now has its own gulf — at least according to City Council.

Council members on Monday approved Resolution 1047-2026, a tongue-in-cheek measure sponsored by Ward 4’s Kris Harsh that renames a portion of Lake Erie to the “Gulf of Cleveland.”

The resolution was written as a parody of recent government-led efforts to rename geographic landmarks and features. According to the legislation, City Council declared that “this Council now and forever renames the area of Lake Erie from the easternmost and westernmost points of its shoreline and two miles into Lake Erie from its shoreline as the ‘Gulf of Cleveland.'”

The resolution also says Cleveland intends to notify major mapping companies, including Apple and Google, and expects them to recognize the new name. Harsh leaned into the joke during a floor speech before fellow members.

“For too long in this country, we have bent the knee to the past,” Harsh said. “The time is now to claim our birth.”

The councilman referenced recent efforts to rename geographical features before announcing what he called the “extraordinary step” of renaming Lake Erie as the Gulf of Cleveland.

“There’s a very real person in Pennsylvania right now who wants to rename it the Lake of Pennsylvania, and we cannot as Ohioans let the Pennsylvanians get a jump on us,” Harsh joked. “It’s our lake.”

The speech became increasingly absurd as it continued, with Harsh arguing that because a lake is not technically a gulf, the distinction should not matter.

“I can already hear some of you saying, ‘But Kris, it’s not even a gulf — it’s a lake,'” Harsh said. “And I say, who cares?”

At one point, the councilman displayed what he described as a newly created map and joked that simply changing the label made the name official.

“You watch YouTube, it’s now the Gulf of Cleveland,” he said, later adding that he expected Google and Apple to recognize Cleveland’s “sovereignty.”

Harsh also suggested the change would boost tourism because “people like to vacation in gulfs,” and quipped that if plans for a lakefront golf course move forward, visitors might someday be able to “golf in the gulf.”

Following the speech, Council President Blaine Griffin laughed and told Harsh he may have just created one of TikTok and YouTube’s top clips of the week.

While the resolution was adopted by council, it carries no legal authority over the name of Lake Erie and is largely intended as political satire. Still, if Harsh has his way, Clevelanders may soon have a new way to describe the city’s waterfront.

“Join me in saluting the Gulf of Cleveland on your way home tonight,” he said.