President Donald Trump told a Saturday rally crowd in Clarksville, Tennessee, that he wants to rename either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean to “Trump Ocean” or the “Ocean of the Americas” before he leaves office. Speaking at F&M Bank Arena, he said the country already has the Gulf of America and a beautiful lake and now needs a river and an ocean, according to Fox News.
Trump ruled out changing the Hudson River, saying Henry Hudson “did a good job setting up that sucker a long time ago,” and the Mississippi River because he likes Mississippi and the state supported him strongly. He framed the idea as something that should happen before the end of his term but did not announce any formal executive order or legislative plan. The remarks came during a midterm campaign stop that also featured Kid Rock and focused on manufacturing investments, crime, and other administration priorities.
The suggestion follows Trump’s earlier renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America through an executive order and a subsequent move involving Lake Ontario. Online critics quickly noted that any U.S.-only federal renaming of an international ocean would likely be reversed by a future administration and that the Atlantic and Pacific are governed by international conventions rather than any single country. Mexico and other nations have continued using traditional names for waters previously targeted by U.S. federal changes.
President Trump suggested renaming the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean as “Trump Ocean” or “Ocean of the Americas” on Saturday during a campaign rally in Clarksville, Tennessee. “So we’ve got the Gulf, we’ve got a beautiful lake,” Trump said. “So we need a river, we need an ocean, so I was thinking of either the Atlantic or the Pacific, we'd call it Trump Ocean or Ocean of the Americas, something like that.”
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 11, 2026
No official White House statement has formalized the ocean proposal. The comments drew laughter and applause from the Tennessee audience and immediate discussion across social media about practicality, precedent, and the limits of unilateral geographic renaming.
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