A Fox News host wasn’t on board with President Donald Trump’s executive order changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America”—for the oddest of reasons.
On The Five, Trey Gowdy discussed the president’s latest barb at Canada following the breakdown of trade talks last week and the imposition of matching tariffs by both sides.
The president’s executive order, signed apparently because “Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade,” requires the Interior Department to update the Geographic Names Information System so that the federal government uses Trump’s made-up name from now on. It does little else beyond that.
Trump, who pulled a similar move with the Gulf of Mexico on his first day back in office in 2025, may want to rethink the name change, Gowdy suggested Thursday, because it alters an acronym schoolchildren use to memorize the Great Lakes: “H.O.M.E.S.,” which stands for Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.
“Here’s what troubles me: So, it took me 12 years to remember that acronym,” Gowdy, a lawyer, began. “The ‘O’ changes to ‘A.’ That’s close to ‘H.A.M.A.S.’ That’s what bothers me about changing the name from ‘Ontario’ to ‘America’—is how close that acronym is to ‘H.A.M.A.S.’ It’s going to confuse a lot of kids.“
“That’s why I haven’t made up my mind on it yet,” the 62-year-old former South Carolina congressman said on Fox’s most-watched show.
One problem with that argument is that schoolchildren won’t even be taught a new acronym for the Great Lakes, since Trump’s executive order is limited in scope.
Also, the new acronym after Trump’s name change would spell out “H.A.M.E.S.,” which isn’t even a word, so it’s unlikely to make for a good memorization tool.
But one acronym that uses those letters and is a word is “S.H.A.M.E.” That would be fitting, given current affairs, several X users noted in response to Gowdy’s comment.
The Five co-host Jessica Tarlov also criticized Gowdy’s concerns about any confusion with the Islamic Resistance Movement, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.
“No kids know what Hamas is,” she said bluntly.
