President Donald Trump’s plan to rename the Atlantic Ocean ran into trouble when he presented it to Google.
At a rally Wednesday in South Carolina, Trump said he plans to put his name or “America” on one of the two oceans that border the United States: the Atlantic and the Pacific.
“I’m not going to put Trump or America on another ocean than those two,” he told the crowd.
Then, he said, he called Google to ask how to make the change on Google Maps.
The tech giant previously changed its U.S. labels for the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario to Gulf of America and Lake America following executive orders from the president.
“I talked to a brilliant guy, Sundar. He runs the whole of Google,” Trump said, referring to CEO Sundar Pichai. He also praised Google co-founder Sergey Brin, calling both men “totally brilliant guys”, before joking that they were “still shaken from the Gulf”.
Trump said he pitched his idea directly to Pichai: “Sundar, I’m thinking of the Atlantic Ocean. Can you handle it?”
“No, no, no. This time I don’t,” Trump quoted Pichai as saying. “The oceans are different, sir. They really cover a lot of country. Please don’t ask us to do this.”
“So I’ll probably take my test,” Trump told the crowd. “Should I pass it?” He then answered his own question: “I think we should keep the Atlantic Ocean.”
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This wasn’t Trump’s first oceanic speech. At a rally in Tennessee in early October, he launched the “Trump Ocean” or “Ocean of the Americas” for the Atlantic or the Pacific.
He also considered renaming a river, calling New Mexico “New America” and renaming the Strait of Hormuz “Trump Strait.”
Although these ideas remain proposals, Google Maps adopted “Gulf of America” and “Lake America” for US users after the names changed in federal records. Users in Mexico and Canada still see the original names of the gulf and lake, respectively. Users in the rest of the world see the original names, followed by Trump’s new names in parentheses.
The changes have created a dilemma for people who create maps for an international audience. “The question of international acceptance is also a factor, because some countries may not accept it,” Replogle Globes CEO Joseph Wright told Business Insider’s Joshua Nelken-Zitser after the lake order.
“We sell globes all over the world.”
For now, Trump’s Atlantic idea appears to have sunk before it reached Google Maps.
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