The City of Cleveland has entered the debate over what to call Lake Erie, with city councillors proposing a satirical new name for the Great Lake: the “Gulf of Cleveland.”
The non-binding resolution is the latest response to controversial efforts to rename bodies of water in the United States, according to U.S. media reports.
“I feel emboldened to take the extraordinary step of renaming Lake Erie as the Gulf of Cleveland,” council member Kris Harsh said Monday.
“Keep in mind, there’s a very real person in Pennsylvania right now who wants to rename it the Lake of Pennsylvania. We cannot, as Ohioans, let the Pennsylvanians get a jump on us. It’s our lake.”
The move comes as David Maloney, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, prepares a resolution urging U.S. President Donald Trump, Congress, and the United States Secretary of the Interior to “take the necessary steps” to rename Lake Erie as “Lake Pennsylvania.”
Lake Erie near Colchester is shown on Friday, September 11, 2026. (WINDSOR STAR – DAN JANISSE) Dan Janisse
The reasoning behind the name change derives from the lake’s modern identity, according to a news release issued by his office on Sept. 8.
“Pennsylvania has only one Great Lake and maybe it is time we put our name on it,” Maloney said.
MP Chris Lewis (PC — Essex), whose riding includes a portion of the Lake Erie shoreline, did not respond to the Star’s request for comment.
Essex County Warden Hilda MacDonald said Friday she had “nothing to say” about the proposed name change, adding, “why give them any airtime?”
Essex Mayor Sherry Bondy also said she could not comment on the proposal.
Lake Erie first appeared on French colonial maps in the mid-1600s, according to the PBS station in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Erie is a shortened form of “Erielhonan,” named after the Erielhonan Indigenous people who inhabited the lake’s southern shores, now a part of the United States.
The proposal comes in the wake of Trump changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in August, after trade negotiations with Canada stalled. In January 2025, Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, triggering opposition from Mexican officials, international bodies, and the public.
As with Lake Ontario, U.S. government approval of a Lake Erie name change would only apply within the U.S. Canada has its own geographical naming authorities and would not have to recognize the name change.
Prime Minister Mark Carney firmly rejected calling Lake Ontario anything else, stressing the historic name has Indigenous roots predating both modern nations.
— With files from Stewart Lewis, The National Post