A Republican state representative from southeastern Pennsylvania is preparing a resolution asking President Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to rename Lake Erie, the state's only Great Lake, to "Lake Pennsylvania," building on the administration's earlier renaming of Lake Ontario.

Rep. David Maloney, who represents a district of roughly 65,000 people nowhere near the lake's shoreline, wants the federal government to slap Pennsylvania's name on the 240-mile body of water that also borders Ohio, New York, and Canada. Fox News first reported Maloney's proposal over the weekend, and the lawmaker wasted no time making his pitch.

Maloney framed the push as a matter of state pride and economic branding. In a statement, he argued that Pennsylvania deserves naming rights because it holds the shortest stretch of Great Lakes coastline among the bordering states.

"This is Pennsylvania's only Great Lake. Its modern economy and identity are increasingly tied to the boaters, anglers, families, and tourists who come to enjoy it."

He then took a swipe at the neighbors: "Ohio has plenty of shoreline. New York already has two Great Lakes. Canada has four others." His conclusion was blunt: "Pennsylvania has one. Let's call it Lake Pennsylvania!"

Maloney's district sits hundreds of miles from the lake he wants renamed

One detail jumps off the page. Maloney's southeastern Pennsylvania district does not border Lake Erie. The lake sits in the far northwestern corner of the state, separated from his constituents by most of Pennsylvania's landmass. Whether voters along the actual shoreline share his enthusiasm remains an open question, and one the resolution does not appear to address.

Lake Erie is the fourth largest of the Great Lakes by surface area but the smallest by water volume and the shallowest, with a maximum depth of just 210 feet. Roughly 12 million people live along its waters, about 10.5 million on the American side and 1.9 million in Canada. Renaming it would affect signage, maps, federal documents, and the sensibilities of three other states and a foreign nation that share the shoreline.

The resolution is directed at Trump, Burgum, and unnamed members of Capitol Hill. It has not yet been formally introduced, so its prospects remain unclear. But Maloney is riding a wave, or at least trying to catch one, set in motion by the president himself.

Trump's Lake Ontario order drew pushback from polls and tribal leaders alike

Last month, Trump signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America" for federal government purposes. The order does not force Canada, other international bodies, or individual U.S. states to adopt the new name, but it triggered real-world changes almost immediately. Both Google Maps and Apple Maps updated their labels for U.S. users, swapping "Lake Ontario" for "Lake America."

Canada's government refused to recognize the change. That refusal fits the broader pattern of friction between Ottawa and the Trump administration, which had already been escalating a trade fight with Canada when the executive order landed.

Tribal leaders objected on different grounds. A leader of the Seneca Nation in upstate New York argued that the renaming violates a treaty signed by George Washington in 1794, a compact between the federal government and the Seneca people that predates every modern boundary dispute by more than two centuries.

Leaders from the Wyandotte and Mohawk nations also protested. One tribal leader called the Lake Ontario renaming "disrespectful" and said the Department of the Interior failed to consult tribal nations about bodies of water that indigenous peoples named long before either the United States or Canada existed. The word "Ontario" itself comes from an Indian word meaning "lake of shining waters." Four of the five Great Lakes, all except Lake Superior, which was named by early French explorers, carry names rooted in Native American languages.

"Erie" falls squarely in that category. Maloney's proposal would strip away a name with indigenous origins and replace it with a state label, a move that could draw the same tribal opposition that greeted the Lake Ontario order. So far, tribal leaders have not commented publicly on the Lake Erie proposal specifically.

Public opinion ran sharply against the Lake Ontario change

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in late August surveyed more than 1,000 adults nationwide on the Lake Ontario renaming. The results were lopsided: 63 percent of respondents disapproved of the change, and only 14 percent approved. Those numbers suggest that geographic renaming, whatever its symbolic appeal inside Washington, does not carry broad public support.

The Lake Ontario order was not the only naming controversy stirred by the administration. Trump also suggested renaming New Mexico to "New America," prompting several of the state's Democratic lawmakers to call on Apple and Google to publicly commit to keeping New Mexico's current name on their mapping applications. The pattern is clear enough: the president floats a name change, tech companies comply for U.S. users, and the political fallout spreads outward.

Conservative commentators have not been uniformly enthusiastic. Some on the right questioned the Lake Ontario order on the grounds that the existing names already belong to American history, indigenous American history, specifically, and that swapping them out solves no real problem.

Maloney's gambit raises more questions than it answers

Maloney's resolution, if introduced, would be a state-level ask, a formal request, not a binding law. Whether Trump or Burgum would act on it is anyone's guess. The president has shown a willingness to use executive orders for symbolic geographic changes, but Lake Erie presents a messier target than Lake Ontario. Four states and a foreign country share its waters. Ohio, which holds far more Erie shoreline than Pennsylvania, might have something to say about a name that erases the lake's connection to every other jurisdiction on its banks.

And the electoral math is uncertain. Great Lakes states will host key races in the 2026 midterms. Whether renaming controversies help or hurt Republican candidates in those contests is an unknown that Maloney's resolution does nothing to clarify.

Trump has used executive orders aggressively across a range of policy areas, from law enforcement to federal institutions. Geographic renaming is among the more unusual applications of that authority, and Maloney's proposal would push it further, from a shared international lake to a body of water that one state wants to claim by name alone.

Pennsylvania has 51 miles of Lake Erie shoreline. Ohio has 312. If naming rights went by the mile, Maloney's pitch would not survive the first round. But this was never about geography. It is about a state lawmaker spotting a political current and trying to ride it, from a district that cannot even see the water.

When a politician hundreds of miles from a lake decides it needs his state's name on it, the proposal tells you more about the politician than the lake.